My job is to make you worry.  So please stop all your focusing, getting things done, sleeping, and goal setting to read this, and then backup your computer right now.

Let’s start with the basics of your situation:

• Your memories (baby photos, loan documents, and old music from college) are stored on a hard drive.
• Hard drives fail every second of every day.  There’s nothing “safe” about a hard drive.
• When your hard drive fails, chances are solid you’ll lose everything with no way to recover it.
• It happens to everybody at some point.

Having a hard drive fail must be every bit as bad as having your house burn down was fifty years ago.  Every photo and song you own, every scan you’ve made, all of your personal documents and emails… this stuff is no longer stored in cardboard boxes in a dark attic… it’s all stored on a super-complex piece of mechanical equipment with a seriously bad failure rate that is by no means inversely correlated with its importance.  For many people reading this, your entire livelihood is being held together by little screws.  Crazy.

To be clear about why backup is important: it’s not a matter of IF your hard drive someday dies, it’s a matter of WHEN.  And it’ll probably happen without warning, like an earthquake or major power outage.  Eventually they all fail, and chances are it will be the day before you decide to backup.  50% of people have lost data from their computer at one time, and many, many people have experienced the nuclear meltdown of full data loss… that moment when the guy behind the counter tells you there’s nothing he can do: IT’S ALL GONE.

Your data is as good as gone if you’re not paying attention to it.

My Horror Story

Like a trip to the emergency room, everyone has a story.  If you’re sitting there saying, “well, I’ve never had to to go to the emergency room” – to that, I say “just wait”… exactly what I say to those who think their hard drive will never fail.

In July 2001, some weird things were happening with my computer.  Files were throwing errors when trying to copy, and things were running at a glacial pace.  I realized that I hadn’t done a backup in a few months, so I started getting ready to backup all the data on my hard drive to an external drive by formatting the external drive (mistake #1) to prepare it.

Just after the long, full format process, my computer started making funny noises from inside the case.  <click> <click> <click>.  I freaked out and turned the machine off, waited a few seconds, and then turned it back on.  It said just one thing:

- Error: Hard drive failure -

My heart started racing, realizing that my backup drive was completely empty.  I turned off the computer again and started over.  Same thing.  I did this about 15 times (mistake #2 since that can make things worse) to no avail.  What I had were warning signs (slow performance, strange errors, clicking noises) but right here, right now: I’d reached the point of total failure.

After hours of research, I came to the conclusion that I only had one option: calling a data recovery service. 

In theory, the data was safe on the hard drive platters but the drive itself would need a new read/write head in order to retrieve the files.  In other words, software couldn’t solve the problem; I needed someone with specialized equipment. 

It would cost a small fortune, take at least a week, and there was still no guarantee that anything could be saved.

Long story short: some teenage kid showed up at my house in a beaten up old car, charged me $800 on the spot, and took my computer away with him.  I didn’t even catch his name (mistake #3 – luckily it turned out OK).  After the longest week of my life to that point, my data was mostly recovered (all but 16 random files) and my computer was returned to me with a new hard drive.

I realized then and there that I needed to be maniacal about “data insurance”.  I needed my files to be safe no matter what.  Since then I’ve had no fewer than FIVE hard drive failures, and the stakes have gone way up for me – I have a family now and tens of thousands of family photos.  I’ve scanned and shredded all of my important documents.  And I work in high-tech, so everything I do all day is stored digitally. 

I now sleep soundly every night knowing that it would take an all-out global disaster for me to lose my stuff at this point.  And if that actually happens, I have bigger things to worry about.

Getting Started Right Now

Here’s how you need to think about this starting today:

• Nothing is safe until it’s on at least three different drives, in at least two different physical locations – and it’s updated all the time.

Sounds like it could be a lot of work, but it’s not at all.  There’s a little bit of money and effort upfront, but the cost of ongoing maintenance is so minimal as to not even be noticeable.  Trust me, if I can do it, you can do it.

I’ll break it down step-by-step so there are no excuses

1. Buy one, two, or three external hard drives depending on how serious you want to be about this.  Go to Amazon.com and get the biggest drives you can afford.  Western Digital 1TB drives are less than $100 these days, and for most people, that’s more than enough space.  Alternatively you can determine how much space your stuff takes up on your current hard drive and add 25-50% for future growth.
2. Do a complete backup of your system using Windows Backup or CrashPlan on all of the drives.  To setup Windows Backup, just type “Backup” in the Start menu and open “Backup and Restore”.  CrashPlan is a free backup program that’s also really easy to use.
3. Enable Bitlocker on all drives if you have Windows 7 Ultimate (optional).  To enable Bitlocker, just type “Bitlocker” in the Start Menu and go to “BitLocker Drive Encryption –> Bitlocker To Go”.  This will make sure that no one can see your files if they happen to get a hold of the drive.  Note: Make sure to keep your recovery keys for Bitlocker in a safe place too.
4. Place the first drive in a fireproof, locked media safe somewhere in your home.
5. Place the second drive someplace other than your home (optional if you have a second drive… but recommended).  You could put it in your office, at your sister’s house, or in a safety deposit box at the bank.  Whatever you do, you want to make sure it’s not in the same place as the first drive just in case of burglary, earthquake, Terminator attacks, etc.
6. Leave the third drive connected to your computer for continuous, onsite backup (optional if you have a third drive… but recommended).
7. Rotate backups for the first two drives not connected to your PC.  Using whatever reminder system you have, make sure you have a reminder set to backup each drive every 30-60-90 days.  Alternate which drive you backup so you aren’t doing them both in the same month.  Note: incremental backups take just a few minutes so there’s really no excuse!
8. Sign-up for CrashPlan Central.  For $50/year you get unlimited, offsite, encrypted, continuous backup.  If you have no idea what I just said, don’t worry: your stuff will be stored in a place that only you can access and will be backed up all the time.  This will take a long time to finish depending on your Internet connection, but it’s worth it.  Trust me.  This is the most important step in the plan.  No, CrashPlan doesn’t pay me a dime, I just love it.  Learn about it here.

The process may take some time, but there’s less than 60 minutes of your time required to get the entire backup system in place.

Once you’re finished, you’ll have an immediate backup onsite, an immediate backup offsite, and ways to get back to files you may have deleted months ago.  This strategy has saved my hide more times than I’d like to count.

And yes, if your files aren’t that important to you, then even this level of investment may not be worth it.  But at least do steps #1, #2, and #8 with a single external drive if you’d be at all upset to one day wake up and have to buy a new hard drive and start from scratch.

Good luck next time you have a total hard drive failure.  I’m sorry to say, it will happen.  When it does, you can check out the 5 stages of data loss grief on Gizmodo to see what’s in store!

Related posts:

1. 12 Steps to Simplify Your PC (with Windows 7)
2. Going Paperless at Home in 6 Easy Steps
3. Protect Your Time: 8 Ways to Stay Focused on Important Stuff

Apologies in advance!  This is the kind of piece I used to post to my old blog – a geeky article about how to squeeze the most out of some aspect of technology.  That blog is no longer active now that this blog has taken its place, and given that my interest in technology relates to its ability to improve people’s lives in a general sense, I figured some thoughts on simple computing would fit in nicely on Refocuser.  It’s hard to contain my excitement these days for my day job in high-tech (what a luxury!) so there are worse things than having it bleed into my other passion.  This post, however, will be a little more “basic” than some of the stuff I used to post about – there won’t be any hard drive partitioning here!

As many of you may have heard, Microsoft released the latest version of Windows – Windows 7 – on October 22, 2009.  Disclaimer: I do work on the Windows team at Microsoft – but I’m a fan of good technology first and foremost, so this isn’t some sort of advertisement – nor does it represent anyone or anything at Microsoft.  This new version of Windows is known for being faster, more reliable, more secure, and just plain better than any version of Windows to-date.  I’ve been beta testing it for well over a year, and I can definitely say that it’s changed the way I feel about my PC.  My PC is fun again with Windows 7 and works exactly how I want it to.

Getting a PC into the most optimal state isn’t something that just happens though.  We aren’t (yet) at a place where computers are perfect all the time (despite what Apple apologists will tell you) – and they certainly can’t read our minds yet – it still requires a little bit of know-how and some work to get your PC into tip-top shape.  And once you set it up how you want it, it requires some level of discipline to leave it that way…. to not ruin it with loads of junky software, and to avoid cluttering your desktop or personal files with things you don’t need.  It’s important that if you’re going to spend the time to simplify your PC that you keep it that way for as long as you can (at least until Windows 8 comes out!)  You’ll find yourself operating at a much higher level, focused on the task at hand instead of struggling to find files, or simply fighting with your computer every step of the way.

After all, that’s what this is all about. Focus. Very few of us actually enjoy configuring software or moving data from one computer to the next. But with a little groundwork, you can increase your ability to focus tenfold.

Now before you do anything, I’d recommend installing Windows 7 on a new computer, or at least a blank hard drive.  I wouldn’t do a straight upgrade from Windows Vista (or Windows XP, which is a little trickier) – I would start on an empty hard drive and do what’s called a “clean install” so that you only have the operating system, and not the loads of old software and settings you’ve been carrying around.  If you’re wondering which version of Windows 7 to buy for a new or existing PC, I would look at this chart and check out the Microsoft Store.  If you’re still confused, or if you don’t know what you’re reading at all, I would just opt for Windows 7 Home Premium.

Once you have Windows 7 installation under way, here are the 12 steps I recommend taking:

1. Enable Automatic Updates during Setup. Windows 7 is a living operating system, constantly updated to keep your PC secure and running smoothly.  In order to keep this up, the best thing to do is to enable automatic updates – that way you don’t have to worry about manually checking for new updates from Microsoft.  Whether it’s an updated driver for a new piece of hardware or a security patch, you’re going to want these things automatically installed for you while you’re sleeping – so you can focus on things other than being an IT manager for your home!

2. Install Microsoft Security Essentials. While Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 are more secure than any other operating system and browser combination out there, hackers and virus hounds still like to pound on Windows since it has 1 billion+ users.  This means you’d be silly not to have some additional protection to make sure you don’t inadvertently get any spyware or Trojans on your PC.  Microsoft Security Essentials is free and it’s the quietest security software out there, only bugging you when something is wrong.  Highly recommended over naggy, heavyweight, and expensive security packages like McAfee or Norton.  You can get Microsoft Security Essentials from http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials.

3. Install Windows Live Essentials. Microsoft removed many of the in-box applications from Windows XP/Vista in order to release them more frequently.  These applications include Movie Maker (what I work on), Photo Gallery, Writer, Mail, Messenger, Silverlight, and others. These programs really do complete the Windows experience (without them, you only have very basic ways to manage your photo collection for instance) and they’re lightweight, fast, and full of great features for Windows 7.  Also highly recommended. You can get Windows Live Essentials from http://download.live.com.

4. Install Office 2007 (if you need it).  If you need Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and/or Outlook, Microsoft Office 2007 is the best way to go (note: Office 2010 is currently in beta testing).  If your needs are minimal, you can get by with a web alternative – but given that Office 2007 runs like a charm on Windows 7 and gives you the “real deal”, enabling just about anything anyone would need from a productivity suite, it’s worth a strong consideration.  The first thing I do when I install it is change the Theme to Black or Silver – the Blue theme is so 2001. You can do this by opening Word and going to Options.  You can buy Office 2007 from www.microsoftstore.com.

5. Install Adobe Reader and Flash. These two programs are necessary evils – you can’t do much on the web without Flash, and with so many documents in PDF format, you’d be hard pressed to get by without Reader.  There are alternatives (like Foxit Reader) but Adobe has been much less aggressive in the way it takes over your computer lately, so there’s not much harm in installing the real deal.  When I install Reader, I turn off automatic updates when it prompts me because I just don’t want another program “phoning home” when I’m trying to use it.  That’s a personal preference though.  You can get Reader and Flash from www.adobe.com.

6. Install Windows Live Sync (if you need it). Keeping files “in sync” across multiple computers isn’t an easy concept for people to understand, but once you do, it’s really powerful. Windows Live Sync helps you roam specific folders (like your Documents or Pictures) across the Internet to other PCs.  It’s also great to keep your Internet Explorer Favorites the same everywhere.  I use Sync to keep a set of roaming documents synchronized between 4 different PCs (and a Mac) so that wherever and whenever I happen to be, I can get to my most important up-to-date files.  If you don’t need this capability, I would just skip this step entirely.  But if you do, this can change the way you work.  You can get Windows Live Sync from http://sync.live.com.

7. Choose a Theme. Once you have the basics running on Windows 7, you can have a little fun with it.  Open the Control Panel from the Start menu and go to “Change the theme”.  From this screen you’ll be able to choose from one of seven great themes, which come with their own window color, desktop backgrounds, and sounds.  You can also click “Get more themes online” to browse popular themes for your PC like Infiniti, Coke, Zune, and my favorite, Bing pictures.  And if you want to get creative, you can even create your own – just choose a theme you like and then change some aspects of it (like adding your own background images to cycle through) and save it.  I personally like great photography, so I usually stick with the simple but highly inspiring photographs.

8. Setup HomeGroup (if you need it). HomeGroup is a new feature in Windows 7 which connects all PCs on a home network to documents, music, video, pictures, and even printers.  If you have a laptop and a desktop, or just multiple PCs at home, HomeGroup is a lifesaver.  You can print easily to any printer in the HomeGroup, and access all of the files you need once connected to the network (yes, it works wirelessly too).  It’s so much easier than standard file or printer sharing, and even works with laptops that are a part of a corporate domain – so your work laptop can connect seamlessly to your home network at home with HomeGroup.  To setup HomeGroup, just click Start and type “HomeGroup” and enter.

9. Pin Your Favorite Programs to the Taskbar. Forget digging through the Start Menu when you want to find your favorite program, just add it to the new taskbar. You can do this a few different ways – the two easiest are to just drag and drop the shortcut from the Start Menu onto the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, or to right-click on the program you’d like to pin and click “Pin to Taskbar”.  You can then rearrange your taskbar however you’d like by dragging and dropping.  One fun trick: when you right-click on icons on the taskbar, if they’re designed for Windows 7, you get what’s called a Jump list – a list of actions you can start right from the taskbar.  Another fun one: you can pin the Control Panel down there by opening up the Control Panel from the Start menu, and then right-clicking on it in the Taskbar and selecting “Pin to Taskbar”.

10. Put Everything in Your Users Folder. From now on, everything you save should go into your Users folder.  You can access this by going to Start and then clicking on your name.  If you keep all your documents, downloads, music, videos, and pictures in one place (C:\Users\Your Name) you can more easily move this stuff to a new computer in the future.  You can also backup your system without fear that you’re forgetting something important somewhere.  This is something I’ve been doing for over 20 years (long before Windows started supporting it) and feel very strongly that it’s a requirement for peace of mind. You want your backups to be actual backups of your stuff!

11. Clean Up Your Messy Desktop. If your desktop is littered with files, folders, and other shortcuts, I’d recommend booking an hour and going through every single thing on your desktop and finding a place for it in your Users folder (just not the Desktop folder).  If you can’t do that, create a folder called “Old Desktop MM/DD/YYYY” (with the actual date) in your Documents folder and put everything into that.  When cleaning up, don’t worry too much about deleting shortcuts to programs that litter themselves on your desktop – you aren’t deleting the program itself, just the pointer to it (which is also in your Start menu).  One trick I also like to use is to turn off my desktop icons entirely since everything I need is either in the Start Menu or the Taskbar.  You can do this from the Control Panel by searching for “Turn off desktop icons” and selecting the “Show or hide common icons” option.  This keeps me from emptying my recycle bin all the time – instead, it actually serves the purpose it was meant to solve (namely keeping things “almost” deleted until I need them again!)

12. Setup Regular Backup. 1 in 3 people don’t view backup as a necessity, yet 50% of people have lost data at some point.  Laptops are stolen all the time (over 2,000 each day) and hard drives crash every minute – and with over 500 billion digital files in existence, that’s a lot of potential data to lose.  The average U.S. adult has well over 2,000 digital files – photos, documents, music, and other types.  Having lost data in the past, I take my backup system very, very seriously (at any given time I have 5 different copies of my data in 3 different physical locations).  It’s not something I have to think about anymore.  While there are a number of great backup solutions out there, I’m going to recommend you do at least two of these three things:

1. Backup to an external hard drive (preferably stored in a fireproof, locked media-ready safe) using Windows Backup.  To setup Windows Backup, just type “Backup” in the Start menu and open “Backup and Restore”.  Windows Backup will automatically backup the important folders (see #10 above).
2. Backup to an online service.  I use CrashPlan these days because I think the desktop software is a little better than the others, but Mozy and Carbonite are also good options.  Backing up to an online service will take days (or weeks – or even months) but there’s no better peace of mind that your data is safe somewhere other than your home.  Even though your hard drive is most likely to fail, fire, earthquakes, and burglary are real threats too.
3. Backup to a Windows Home Server.  Don’t let the name fool you – even though it’s called a server, it’s surprisingly easy to use.  Windows Home Server backs up all the computers on your local network automatically every day, and lets you restore individual files or the entire computer.  You can even go back to any date (depending on how many backups you choose to store) and restore your PC to an exact date and time from weeks ago.  HP, Acer, and Lenovo make great Home Servers – check them out.

By the way, if you’re still using Windows XP and need access to something that’s only available in Windows XP for some reason, you can also use Windows XP Mode with Windows 7 provided your hardware supports it.

Naturally there are many, many other things you could do with Windows 7 if you want to.  You have access to millions of programs, utilities, gadgets, peripherals, and so on.  If you have an iPod or a Zune, you’re also going to want to install software (like iTunes or the Zune player) to go along with it.  But for the most part, you should avoid installing too much stuff like the software that comes with your camera, webcam, or removable hard drive.  Most of what you need comes with Windows or Windows Live, and cluttering up your PC with a bunch of half-baked software is never a good thing. 

If you start with the list above, you’ll have a system that should hum along for years.  It’ll be fast, full of great software for fun tasks like video and photo editing, but most importantly, it will get out of your way and let you do your thing.  Exactly what a minimalist PC should be.

Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. It’s Hard To Focus If You Can’t Find Anything
2. Going Paperless at Home in 6 Easy Steps
3. Backup: The Most Important Thing Your Computer Can Do

The simplest way to think about this: your personal vision is your “ultimate goal”.  It’s an inspirational but achievable future state of mind and being that indirectly influences your decisions and guides you down your best path.  Your goals are interim milestones that contribute to fulfilling that vision – these are measurable and realistic targets that you use to base many of your actions.  And your habits are the small steps you take every single day that bring you ever closer to your goals.  This means they are the foundational element that everything builds on – your goals and your vision aren’t possible until you form the right habits.

Since many of us are visual, here’s a basic diagram showing how habits form the “bottom of the pyramid”. 

Unfortunately, It’s not abnormal to get into a funk when it comes to your daily habits.  One day “off” can easily snowball into 5 days or 5 weeks.  It’s always easier to convince yourself that slacking off with a specific daily habit isn’t going to make a difference than it is to just do it.  It’s amazing how powerful our internal motivation for slacking can actually be!

I’ve found for myself and for many others that the best way to return from a funk is to put the following two things into place:

1. Track your habits daily (not weekly or monthly)
2. Let other people see your progress

For the past few years, I’ve been using a (free) site called Joe’s Goals to track daily habits that’s helped accomplish both #1 and #2.  It’s based on a strategy used by Benjamin Franklin who developed a list of his Thirteen Virtues at age 20, and used pen & paper to track his “progress” against these virtues every day.  According to the Art of Manliness:

Franklin carried around a small book of 13 charts. The charts consisted of a column for each day of the week and 13 rows marked with the first letter of his 13 virtues. Franklin evaluated himself at the end of each day. He placed a dot next to each virtue each had violated. The goal was to minimize the number of marks, thus indicating a “clean” life free of vice.

Franklin would especially focus on one virtue each week by placing that virtue at the top that week’s chart and including a “short precept” to explain its meaning. Thus, after 13 weeks he had moved through all 13 virtues and would then start the process over again.

This is how I use Joe’s Goals to track my daily habits:

First, I look at my annual goals and determine which behaviors need to change or which specific daily activities I need to perform in order to achieve them.  While this does vary a bit year-to-year, most of the things on my daily list are things I have had on the list for years, and expect to have there for years to come. 

Once I have the list of trackable habits, I enter them into the site as “goals” (even though they’re actually habits).  While most are daily, some of them occur less frequently (such as posting to this blog) and for those, I just identify the days those occur.  From this point on, all that’s left is to actually start checking off the habits on a daily basis!

In order to remember to do this, I’ve done two pretty basic things to remind me to track these habits every day.  In my web browser I’ve added a link to Joe’s Goals to my Favorites Bar so that it’s front and center as soon as I open the browser (along with other sites I visit frequently).  To do this in Internet Explorer 8, you just need to make sure your Favorites Bar is shown by going to Tools –> Toolbars –> Favorites Bar (it’s shown by default).  Once it’s shown, you can add any site to it just by clicking the “Add to Favorites Bar” button:

(In Firefox 3, when you add a bookmark using the Bookmarks menu, just place the site in the “Bookmarks Toolbar” folder.)

The second thing I’ve done is to add a link to Joe’s Goals to my home screen on my iPhone.  This is straightforward as well – just navigate to www.joesgoals.com in Safari and then click the “+” icon to add the page to your home screen.  Unfortunately there isn’t a better mobile experience, but given that the site is so basic, using the browser should work pretty well on most smartphones.

Then it’s just a matter of checking off the habits daily as I perform them, and making sure to hold myself accountable.  I use the “Current Chain” indicator as a motivator.  This number shows you how many days in a row you’ve checked off that habit (the chain).  I’m always surprised at how well this strategy works to keep me honest; I hate breaking the chain.

One other great feature of Joe’s Goals is the ability to share your badge with other people through your blog or website – this can help push you just a little harder, knowing that other people have access to your progress chart.  For years I had this chart on my personal blog.  There’s no better motivator than questions or encouragement from friends about how well you’re doing!

Check out Joe’s Goals (and no, I don’t know Joe or own the company!)  It’s a fun site full of potential – and it’s simple to use.  You can get up and running in less than a few minutes.  Tracking your habits every day can make a material difference in your ability to stick to them, and Joe’s Goals is one of the easiest ways to do it!

Related posts:

1. 12 Goals: Define and Track Your Habits & Tasks (Step 3)
2. The Beginner’s Guide to Self-Tracking & Analysis
3. 12 Goals: Tools You Can Use

Since 1997, Microsoft Outlook has been my email program of choice.  Sure I’ve dabbled with web mail like Hotmail and Gmail for my personal account, but for anything “serious” I always come back to Outlook.  Of course it doesn’t hurt that I work for Microsoft and therefore couldn’t escape Outlook if I tried, but I continually find Outlook to be an absolute gem for email and for productivity in general.

Part of this is due to the fact that email, calendar, notes, to-do items, a corporate directory, and umpteen other important “modules” are available in a single application.  Another big factor is comfort of course – 12 years in a single program means there isn’t much I don’t know about it at this point.  But for all intents and purposes, I love using Outlook and always have.

This post is about dealing with email overload in Outlook.  It assumes you’re likely in a corporate environment with Microsoft Exchange and that you know a thing or two about Outlook already.  It also assumes email has a chokehold on your life, and you want to learn how to escape with your sanity.

The principles and techniques in this post are things I’ve learned and used over the years and have taught to hundreds of others at Microsoft through “brown bags”, 1:1 coaching, and seminars.  Special thanks go out to Omar Shahine, Michael Affronti, and Trevin Chow for lots of brainstorms and conversations about Outlook email – much of this comes from them.  Omar’s actually my partner in crime as we’ve given talks on Outlook together a few times.

Before getting into the nitty gritty, let’s start with 7 basic email principles which aren’t specific to Outlook use:

1. Reserve your inbox for important items.  Any distribution lists or other types of email you receive that are just of the “FYI” variety (shopping receipts, Netflix shipping reminders, Facebook notifications, etc.) should be filtered away from your attention automatically.
2. Deleting and archiving email should be a one-step (or one-click) action.  Delete without prejudice and archive anything you think you’ll need to refer to at some point, but don’t worry about having deep, nested folders.
3. Never read an email twice.  When processing your email, every time you open a message use the 4Ds discussed as part of David Allen’s Getting Things Done.  Delete it immediately, Do it immediately, Delegate (or forward) it, or Defer it by converting it to a task or appointment.
4. Emails that need follow-up (either by you or by others) should be converted to Tasks or Appointments.  Convert an email to a task with a due date if you want to do it on that date, and convert it to an appointment if it’s time-based (i.e. pick someone up from the airport).  If it’s mandatory that something get done on a certain day but it doesn’t matter what time it’s done, I usually book time for myself on my calendar anyway just to make sure it happens that day.
5. Tasks should be broken down into two important categories: “Next Actions for you” and “Waiting on from others”.  While there are other categories and lists you can use in Outlook, these are the two most critical.
6. Bounce your inbox at zero as often as you can – ideally a few times per week.  This means “seeing the white” in your inbox and knowing 100% of your email has been processed.  See Bouncing at Zero for more information about this.
7. Bounce your daily task list at zero everyday.  Your entire task list will never be empty, but every single day you should know what you’ve accomplished and rebalanced your items for the future (i.e. don’t just ignore them!)  Again, bounce at zero!

There are a dozen more principles I could list, but I want to keep this post a) short and b) more about making things happen than about platitudes.  As Bruce Lee said, “Knowing is not enough, we must apply”.

Now that the high-level principles are out of the way, let’s talk about how best to setup Outlook for massive focus.

Declare Email Bankruptcy and Start Over

If your Inbox currently has more than 100 messages you don’t think you’ll have time to get to, you have a hard choice to make.  You can either a) set some time aside to get through each and every message individually using the 4Ds described above, or you could b) just declare bankruptcy by archiving all your messages and starting fresh.  Choose one now.

If it’s important, they’ll seek you out again.  You can either live underneath a mountain of guilt and shame or you can take an important first step in getting a grip on your email.  I vote to start fresh.

Turn Off All Notifications

Before going any further, if you really care about focusing on what’s important, you should turn off the notifications Outlook generates that are guaranteed to drop you out of flow.  There’s nothing worse than being in the middle of writing an important document when an alert that a family member has forwarded a chain letter from 1996 pops up.  To turn off all notifications, go to: Tools->Options->Email Options->Advanced Email Options… and uncheck any of the options in red you’d like to turn off.

View By Conversation and Color-code Items

If you receive a lot of email that goes back and forth between people (like I do) then turning on conversation view is the next thing you should do.  “View by conversation” will group all messages in a conversation together so you can easily delete, archive, and find the latest message in a long thread easily.

It will probably take you at least a week to get used to this new view.  It’s pretty different, but the time spent is worth it.  You’ll find yourself to be a lot more productive once you get over the hump.  One thing I like to do in a thread of more than a few messages is to quickly delete all the messages leading up to the last one – and then I just read/archive/respond to or delete the last message.  That alone can cut a 100 item inbox down to 30 or 40 items pretty quickly.

To turn on this view, just go to View->Arrange By->Conversation:

Once you have conversations setup, another good thing to do is to color code messages sent directly to you.  I use maroon but you can use blue, green, or any other color.  To do this, you have to setup automatic formatting:

• Go to View->Current View->Customize Current View
• Click Automatic Formatting…
• Click Add and call the rule “To Me”
• Click Font and select the style you’d like to use
• Click Condition and then select “Where I am on the To line with other people”

Once you have this setup, you could do the same thing with a different color for the CC line.  This one trick will help you if you only have 10 minutes to catch-up, but you have 50+ emails waiting to be processed.  You can quickly see which ones are important (!) or just the ones sent directly to you.

Set up Rules

If you receive email you don’t need to see right away, you’re a prime candidate for rules (or filters).  In general, I would setup a rule for email if you’re 95% certain there isn’t going to be any email caught by the rule you’d need to see immediately.  Setting up rules is quite easy in Outlook and it’s powerful enough so that you can do things like “send this message to a special folder unless I’m on the To or CC line”.

To setup a rule, find a type of email you’d like to filter out of your Inbox permanently, right-click on the email and select “Create a rule”:

From here you can automatically filter email from specific people, with a specific subject, or sent to specific people.  If you want to get more advanced, you can click “Advanced Options…” and enter the Rules Wizard which gives you all sorts of great and easy to use options:

Every single time you find yourself reading an email in your Inbox that you don’t feel should have ended up there, setup a rule and get it – and all future emails like it – as far away from your Inbox as possible.  Of course, if you’re at all interested in the content, you should check-in on these folders from time to time as part of your overall workflow.

Simplify Your Folder Hierarchy

Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero (which is fantastic!) has forced thousands of people to reevaluate their email archiving strategy.  Instead of having 50 different folders for filing, Merlin recommends having just one folder called “Archive” or “Everything” and filing items there.  Once they’re in a single folder, you can use Outlook search to find anything you need in less than a second (more on this in a bit).  This will cut down significantly on the cognitive overhead each and every time you receive an email.

Once you’ve created this folder and removed all the other cruft from your mailbox, you can start to make use of keyboard shortcuts for referencing your archive and for archiving email.  These two keyboard shortcuts are invaluable when viewing messages:

• CTRL-SHIFT-V.  Use this to file email in your Archive folder.  It will remember the last used folder, so your workflow will become almost automatic (CTRL-SHIFT-V, Enter, CTRL-SHIFT-V, Enter, etc.)
• CTRL-SHIFT-Y.  Use this to jump to your Archive folder or back to your Inbox.

If you’re not a keyboard fan, you have another simple option.  Look in the toolbar for this button which will make it even quicker to archive items:

Use Search Shortcuts

Instant Search in Outlook 2007 is a life-saver, especially if you’ve simplified your folder hierarchy by going to a single Archive folder.  You can search any folder just by typing in the search box below the Inbox header.  Here are just a few examples of how search can work for you:

• Search for “bobby”  to find any emails containing Bobby.
• Search for from:"bobby moore" to find any emails sent from Bobby Moore.
• Search for from:"bobby moore" about:”status report” to find any emails from Bobby Moore where the words status report appear in the subject, body, or attachment contents (cool!)
• Search for subject:status to find any emails where status appears in the subject
• Search for subject:status received:May to find any emails where subject contains status and the message was sent in the month of May of any year

You can read the rest of the search query syntax on Microsoft’s Outlook site.  I’d recommend printing it out and having it handy as you get used to it.

You can do a lot using the search form too.  Learn more on Microsoft’s Outlook site.

Simplify Your Default View

Another benefit of reducing the number of folders you have is that you can get a lot more space back to see your email list and the contents in the reading pane – because you no longer have to view all of your folders, all of the time!  To do this, minimize your navigation pane by clicking the minimize button in red:

This is what your Inbox looks like before minimizing the navigation pane:

This is how your Inbox will look after

Lots of space saved!  Once the navigation pane is minimized, you can add your Archive folder (or any others you want) to the minimized navigation pane for quick mouse access – you can see this in the screenshot above.  You can do this by right-clicking on a folder in the expanded folder list and then clicking “Add to Favorite Folders”.

Create Buttons for Next Actions and Waiting For Tasks

This is a little more complicated than some of the previous recommendations, but it’s worth doing.  It won’t take more than a couple minutes to do if you follow the instructions.  Note that there are other ways to do this using Flags in Outlook, but I don’t recommend it – it’s far nicer to use Macros because they create “real tasks” in Outlook, complete with subjects and mobile device synchronization.  And they force you to look at the subject + due date during the flow.

(View the macros now)

These macros will:

1. Take one or more email(s) and attach them to a task
2. Automatically file the email(s) in your Archive folder
3. Set the due-date to tomorrow (including jumping over the weekend if it’s a Friday – thanks Trevin!)
4. Set a reminder for the task
5. Pop-up the new task immediately so you can modify it before saving

Here’s what you need to do to enable this – don’t worry, it will just take a minute:

1. Start Outlook
2. Go to Tools–>Macros–>Security and make sure macros aren’t disabled
3. Go to Tools–>Macros->Visual Basic Editor and double-click on This Outlook Session on the left (if it’s not visible, you need to expand the tree) which will open the code window on the right
4. While in the code window, copy and paste the macros from this page and replace YOUR NAME with your actual name.
5. Close the window and restart Outlook, opting to Save when prompted

Now that your macros are ready to go, you just need to add buttons and keyboard shortcuts.

1. Start Outlook
2. Go to View–>Toolbars–>Customize
3. On the Commands tab, click Macros on the left-hand side
4. Drag the Next Action macro to the toolbar (I like it next to the “Send/Receive“ button)
5. Right-click on the button and change the Name field to “&1-Next Action” and the button image to something catchy
6. Follow steps #4 and #5 for the Waiting For macro also (and call it “&2-Waiting For”)
7. Click Close

What you’ll have:

What to do now:

When you come across an email with an action for you, click “Next Action” to create a task with a subject, due date, and the email attachment.  Type a VERY clear task name – i.e. “Talk to Rob about something important” so you don’t have to think too much when that day arrives.  You can also use ALT-1.

When you come across an email with an action for someone else, click “Waiting For” to create a task with the person’s name, due date, and the email attachment again.  You can also use ALT-2.  This is sometimes best used from the Sent Items folder since you’re probably tracking something you’ve sent to someone else.

One fun trick: you can use natural language in the date field.  So instead of using the mouse and finding a date, you can type “tomorrow”, “2 weeks”, “today+4 days”, or “a week from Monday”.  Lots of things work that you wouldn’t expect – it’s cool!

Give It a Try!

Hope this has been helpful!  Be on the lookout for more Outlook tricks and tips over time!

Related posts:

1. Protect Your Time: 8 Ways to Stay Focused on Important Stuff
2. Writing in Microsoft Word Without Any Distractions
3. Spontaneity: Enabled Through Order and Organization

The idea of reading over 200 blogs and other sites every single day sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?  In order to do this, you’d have to spend at least 60 seconds on each site assuming there haven’t been many updates, and if there’s anything new it could easily take 5-10 minutes each!  Once you add this up you could end up spending more than 3 hours each day just scanning and reading stuff – which is the exact opposite of focus.  For most people, this is just pure procrastination city!

There’s definitely a better way to do it, but it’s surprising how few people utilize it when you look at the stats.  It’s called subscribing – so instead of you going out to all those sites and waiting for new information, the information comes to you in the form of a subscription.

Before I learned about RSS and Atom feeds, I was clicking around to dozens of sites multiple times per day like a crack addict in search of a hit.  I would scan the entire page to see if anything had changed before moving on, and if something had changed I would spend a little extra time on that site.  But in the 5 years since discovering feeds and feed readers, my routine is… well, it’s routine.  I “read the paper” in the morning by scanning/reading through the overnight updates, I check-in during the afternoon to see what’s up, and then sometimes (but not always) I do another session in the early evening.  Total time spent: 30-45 minutes maximum.  And I subscribe to 227 different sites!

How Does This Work?

Subscribing to updates is done through a technology called RSS which stands for “Really Simple Syndication”.  Sometimes a site also offers an Atom feed which is similar to RSS – but it doesn’t really matter how it works, what matters is that it does   Calling it RSS is like calling a website “XHTML” – using the format to describe the thing just doesn’t feel right.  So don’t worry about the specifics behind RSS and Atom now that you know that they’re how you subscribe to a site.  For now, I’ll just call it a feed.

Basically every site that offers a feed does so in order for you to keep tabs on the site without having to visit and revisit the site.  The feed contains all the most important content from the site and is usually available on the same domain as the site is, although not always.  For example the feed for Refocuser is available at http://feeds.refocuser.com/Refocuser.  When you click on that link you will see a specially formatted page that gives you information on how to subscribe.

Think about a feed as similar to a newspaper or magazine subscription – if there are no updates, you don’t get a blank magazine in your mailbox.  You only get the magazine delivered to you when there’s been an update.  It comes to you.

Some sites offer what’s called a “full” feed and some only offer a “partial” feed.  Full feeds (like Refocuser) give you all the content you’d normally see on the site within the feed, while partial feeds only give you a snippet to try and get you to click through to the site itself to read the post or article.  Most commercial entities use partial feeds (MSNBC, New York Times, etc.) while most blogs use full feeds.  I’ve found that partial feeds are usually more trouble than they’re worth so less than 5% of the feeds I subscribe to are partial feeds.

Using a Feed Reader

Most modern browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari) support viewing feeds and subscribing to feeds.  However, I don’t know anyone who feels using a browser alone is the best way to consume feeds.  In order to get the most out of subscribing, you’ll need to get going in a “feed reader” which is a specialized application for managing your feed subscriptions, informing you about what’s new, and enabling you to read your subscriptions.  Just think about a feed reader as the first place you’ll go when you’re in “information mode”.  I probably spend more than 85% of my time on the web in my reader although I do occasionally click on articles to read them on the sites themselves.

A few of the popular feed readers are:

• Google Reader.  Currently the #1 feed reader due to its ease of use and “river of news” approach to reading feeds.  Reading updates in Google Reader is fast and easy using keyboard shortcuts – all of your feed updates appear in one stream, so you just have to hit the spacebar to scroll through them.  As you read items, they’re marked as read and if you only have time to get through 10 out of 50 updates, the remaining 40 will stay unread.  Google Reader is where I do most of my reading.
• Microsoft Outlook.  My feed reader of choice for work-related news because I spend the majority of my day in Outlook.  Subscriptions in Outlook automatically go into a special “RSS feeds” folder so you can read them just like you read your email.  One of the great (hidden) benefits of using Outlook to read feeds is that you can use Inbox Rules to direct where you want them to go.  As an example, there are a couple feeds I send directly to my inbox since I want to see them as soon as they’re posted.
• My MSN or My Yahoo.  If you already use one of these sites for your news, you can easily add feeds to the things you track here so you can see Refocuser next to AP’s Top Stories!

How to Subscribe

Subscribing is pretty straightforward in modern browsers – just look for the feed icon in the browser (in Internet Explorer and Firefox it’s orange and in Safari it’s blue RSS text):

When you see this icon, it means that the page you’re on offers a feed of some sort. Of course most sites give you direct access to their feeds by including this image (or the text “RSS feed”) somewhere on the page and when you click it, you can see directions for how to subscribe.  In some cases this page links to various feed readers.  Note that if you see a list of options (RSS 0.92, RSS 2.0, Atom 0.3) then you’re on a site that didn’t pay enough attention to making this easy for readers   Just choose one – it doesn’t matter which – although I usually choose the Atom feed these days.

One catch: you may need to setup your default feed reader in your browser first – and if your feed reader isn’t supported by the browser, you can always just copy-and-paste the feed URL into your reader directly.  This will direct the reader to go out and get the feed automatically.  Some sites like Google Reader also give you a bookmarklet to add to your browser’s bookmarks/favorites – when you come across a site that looks interesting, you just click the bookmarklet to add the site to your feed reader.

Why Should I Do This?

There are lots and lots of benefits.  Here are a few:

1. It saves tons of time if you read blogs or news sites.  You only read the new stuff, you never scan over the old stuff.  If you just read what you’re currently reading now, I guarantee you can do it in less than 25% of the time.
2. You can stay on top of 10x the number of blogs or news sites.  Of course, this is only a benefit if this is interesting to you – but I presume it is if you’ve read this far.  I’m an information junkie and I love being able to track and learn from 227 different sources in 45 minutes a day.  Talk about optimization!
3. You can direct your attention appropriately.  If you categorize your feeds, you can choose to just read a single category at a time.  Some people categorize things based on priority (daily, weekly, monthly) while others do it based on topic.  Either way, you can figure something out that helps you focus your energy.
4. You don’t have to remember URLs or manage your bookmarks.  As a matter of fact, since I started using feeds, I went from a few hundred bookmarks down to just 12.  All the stuff I care about is tracked in my feed reader and only when there’s something new.

What Should I Do Next?

It’s simple!

1. Get started with a feed reader.  Just pick one, you can always change it later if you want to try a different one – they pretty much all support exporting/importing your subscriptions.
2. Subscribe to Refocuser.  Just click here!
3. Go through your bookmarks and subscribe to sites that have feeds.  Just click on each one, look for the feed chicklet and subscribe.
4. Add your feed reader to your bookmarks or Start menu/Dock so it becomes part of your routine.  It may take a few weeks to get into the habit of firing up your feed reader, but trust me: once you get used to it you won’t be able to live without it.
5. Let people know about this post if you think it was useful!  The URL is http://refocuser.com/2009/03/subscriptions.  Also: if you’re a StumbleUpon or Digg user, please use the ShareThis link below to spread the love.

And if you’d like to learn more about feeds, watch this Common Craft video:

(Thanks to SimpleMom for the reminder of the Common Craft video and the idea for this post to begin with)

Feel comfortable with feeds yet?  Want to give it a shot?  Click the feed icon on this page or in your browser and take it one step at a time!

Related posts:

1. How to Read 3 or More Books a Month
2. Guarantee Success By Tracking Your Habits with Joe’s Goals

Add-on utility WriteSpace turns Microsoft Word 2007 into a distraction-free writing environment with the push of a button—making productive writing easy.

For the past few months I’ve been looking for the ideal way to write drafts without distraction, especially given my somewhat unique writing situation (a big burst on Sunday).  My two favorite tools for word processing/blogging on Windows are Word and Windows Live Writer (a fantastic application!) but to-date I haven’t been able to go completely distraction-free in those programs.  With WriteSpace I now can – without sacrificing the power of Word.

This is how it looks and works after you install it.

In the View tab you now have a new chunk for Writespace that either drops you into distraction-free mode or let’s you tweak some options.

And this is what it looks like in action:

Why this is interesting:

• Since it’s built into Word you can drop into and back out of distraction-free mode without losing the functionality of Word.  It’s all there under the covers (including spell-check if you want it) but really helps you focus on the task at hand and not all those fun options like Mail Merge
• It integrates really nicely into Word – it doesn’t feel like a “hack”.  It feels like it’s a natural part of Word.
• It’s simple to install and get running thanks to an all-in-one installer for all the requirements.

Download it and give it a shot – what do you think?

Related tools:

• WriteRoom for Mac OS X
• DarkRoom for Windows
• Windows Live Writer for Windows

Related posts:

1. Finding Time to Write (Or to Get Into Creative Mode)
2. Project Management: Starting a Blog (Part 2 of 2)
3. Staying Focused With Microsoft Outlook: Email