When Outlook Becomes Lookout, Use Categorize

One of the core tools we use to enable us to effectually function in the daily execution of our roles and responsibilities as professionals is the email and time management program known as, Microsoft Outlook. Outlook has revolutionized our jobs and the way we do business every day, hour-by-hour. 

With Outlook we schedule meetings, training sessions and appointments on our Calendars and get real-time reminders when these meetings are coming due so we can be there. Vital information about the meeting can be included with the meeting invite, or if it is an online training session, links and numbers can be provided to connect us quickly and efficiently.

Gone are the days of having to check and recheck our paper calendars and constantly check our watches or the wall clock to make sure we do not miss the meeting. Gone are the days when we had to rummage through papers to find that link and phone number for the training session. Everything is right at our fingertips, literally, through the interface of a keyboard. Gone are the days when we had to spend hours on phones or send interoffice mail by envelopes that delayed actions and responses by two or three days.

Outlook, and computers in general, have transformed our lives and our functionality. Anytime we need to send a document to someone, we can email it. We can email information, action items, references, links, almost instantly. Some individuals collaborate on instant messaging (IM) chats, others shoot several emails back and forth. When we do need a face-to-face visit, we can easily schedule it. All this happens in real time, no delays. The potential for increased proficiency and efficiency is almost exponential.

But—and you knew the “but” had to be coming, unfortunately it can’t just “butt out” and leave us alone—but, as usual, what can potentially increase proficiency and efficiency exponentially can also potentially increase deficiency and inefficiency exponentially if it spirals out of control. With the ease of scheduling meetings, we may schedule too many that are unneeded and thereby infringe on the time of the participants, or send too many back-and-forth emails when we could have handled the communications in other ways.

Another pitfall is that we may start these endless email streams where we include everybody and their brothers and sisters in our distribution and begin to talk in circles about the same thing that everyone else is sending out with the same stream and it begins to get redundant with information that is not pertinent to everyone on the list. Before we know it, 20 emails are generated to clog our boxes or other people’s boxes. Now, multiply this by 5 (because several others in the company are doing the same) and that’s 100 emails generated about a single action or item. This is when Outlook becomes Lookout—here comes more messages and meetings. With a little thinking, planning and foresight we all might get the same work done with 5 or 10 emails instead of 100.

Think of the time and effort that could be saved by individuals if they only had 30 emails to process in a day instead of, say, 300? If we are all working together to limit emails, we could save a great deal of time and effort that is spent reading, responding to and organizing emails. I know a number of employees who only get about 10 to 20 emails in a day in their job functions; if you are one, consider yourself fortunate. I know many others who get 50 to 100, and some managers that easily get 200 to 500 emails in a single day. We all fall somewhere in between. 

Even getting 20 emails a day can be challenging. That’s 100 in a week, and if only half of these require you to perform some kind of action or require some kind of deliverable, that’s 50 “to do” items accumulating in our inboxes while we are working on other projects or getting other work done or participating in meetings, or training, or a plethora of other work-related activities. So how do we manage all of this?

Have you considered using the Categorize feature?

Using Categorize to help organize your incoming emails may be a very workable solution for you in managing your inbox to make sure important things do not slip through the cracks and to maximize the efficiency of the time you spend processing emails and work that needs to be done. On the main screen of Outlook, on the Home tab, you can either click on the little down arrow underneath the menu option Categorize or you can right click on an email in your contents panel (list of emails). After clicking Categorize you will then click on All Categories….

This will bring up a dialog box where you can assign a color and meaning to each color that represents an action or status. You can even assign new colors for additional categories and choices. By thinking through the way you work and then setting up these categories to reflect key actions, you can maximize your efficiency and ease in handling incoming email so that you can tag it to be acted on later in just seconds without forgetting about it, or letting it get buried, or having to ferret back though your list one-by-one to find it again.

By using Categorize in this way to tag emails, you can move on immediately to get to and to handle priority emails and tasks. Then after you have answered the priority or urgent emails and performed the urgent tasks, in one glance you can see what kinds of actions need to be done for these other emails of lesser importance or priority. Then you can more easily plan what to handle in what order and at what time to improve your efficiency and get through your task list. 

Here is an illustration showing some of my Categories and a few explanations of how I use them.

■ Action – These are items that I need to urgently act on or tasks I am assigned or deliverables I need to produce and send immediately or urgently. 

■ Downloaded – This indicates that there were files, reports, presentations or some other documents attached to the email which I have already downloaded. This helps to prevent me from downloading them again later if I already have them on my local machine, and to remind me that I already have the document. 

■ Follow-up – When I delegate something to someone and need to follow-up on their status or progress, I use this category.  Also, if there is any other action, reason or information for which I need an update, I will use this category.  For these items, I add a follow-up date on my task list. 

■ Get Info – This indicates that I need more information regarding this email before I know what to do with it. Either I need to clarify something with the originator or I need to look something up in a policy or back track in the email stream to get the background. 

■ Read – This category is obvious, this email is either lengthy and has information that I need to read at a later time that I have designated for "reading" or it has links in it that I need to go read or even attachments that I need to read. Each day, during "reading" time, I get to these emails. 

■ Ref Info – This is information that I do not need to read, but that I will need to refer to for other reasons. Sometimes I am sent charts with metrics or reports on the status of a list of hundreds of things. When I need the information for any other research, reports, to give an answer, then I will need to refer to the information. These are often periodically updated charts, so I don't need to download them, I just leave them in the email and "refer" to them when I do need them.  

■ Waiting – This alerts me that I am waiting on a further email from the sender that will have more information in it or have a document I need to download or that this email is regarding something that will not happen for several days after which I must then act on it. 

You may notice that my Categories either begin with an asterisk, full stop (period), or an at symbol [ *  .  @ ] and may be wondering why.  This is how I designate what kind of category it is. Those marked with an asterisk are my Email categories, those marked with a full stop are Calendar categories, those marked with the at symbol are Location categories. If an email relates to a task that is not completed at my desk, it may have a Location category assigned.

These examples are NOT provided here to tell you how you should set up your categories. I have provided them to illustrate the concept I am sharing in this article and to give impetus to some ideas you may have about how you can set up your categories to maximize your efficiency. Once your categories are set up, all you need to do is right click on the little gray rectangle (box) next to the email subject line in your email list and it will bring up your categories so you can tag the email and move on.

Look at your email list in Outlook. Off to the right of the sender's name and subject, you should see a light gray rectangular box and a flag. To set a category, right click the empty rectangular box and choose the appropriate color/category.

One important thing to note is that when you are tagging your emails with categories, you can choose more than one. So if two categories apply, you can choose BOTH. Click on one and then click again to add another. You can also clear all categories from the message. Once I am done acting on the email and it can be filed in a folder or archived, I usually clear all categories and file it or archive it.

Getting in the habit of tagging an email with a category as soon as you open it takes only seconds and will help you to optimize your handling of incoming messages by allowing you to set it up to be acted on later without forgetting about it, or letting it get buried, or having to ferret back though your list one-by-one to find it again later.

By using Categorize along with an efficient Folder system, you will be able to keep your Inbox very clear of incoming messages so that only the relevant and urgent emails requiring some kind of action will remain there. You will still be able to easily find any email you need by using the Search function and choosing All Mail Items.

Everything requires a bit of an adjustment period, so when you decide to try Categorize, give it a chance. Don’t give up on it. Once you get used to quickly tagging messages with categories, you will find out how much it pays off in the end. Your efficiency will improve and you will eliminate the burden of clutter from your Outlook Inbox.  ███

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DE Navarro is an experienced global banking professional working in business risk analysis and internal controls as a senior analyst and tech editor/writer.

He also writes work-life balance and quality of life articles for over 30,000 employees in his company, worldwide.

He is a published author, poet and editor with degrees in Communications, Business and Ministerial Leadership. He has over 40 years of experience in writing and editing.

He has published books and articles on life goals, ethics, biblical research, philosophy, language studies, financial management, time management, aromatherapy, racism, writing and writing poetry.

In addition to this, he does freelance writing and editing under the name NavWorks Press.

He published Between Life and Language in 2009, an anthology of 107 poems by 76 different poets, and Dare to Soar in 2013, his own collection of 12 essays and 151 poems. He also provides writing and editing services with five published novels to credit, one non-fiction book, and hundreds of edited articles and essays. He ran an extremely popular online poetry writing forum from 2006-2009 with over 10,000 hits per week and currently manages two LinkedIn Groups, We Write Poetry ?, and Book Story: for Writers Authors Poets Readers.

There are currently several poetry anthology projects on the docket and plans to accept submitted manuscripts for publication in the future. NavWorks Press will unveil a number of publication packages in the near future to help poets and writers self-publish professional and highly polished chap books and other works.