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This morning, while going through some archived threads in the 43Folders group, I stumbled on this amazing Outlook hack in this thread, written by Simon. Don’t know if he has a blog or anything…

“Ever get sent an e-mail with a blank or unintelligible subject line? Maybe you get CCed on a long ping pong e-mail that only reveals it’s relevance in the very last reply. Well, sometimes you need to file these away suckers for reference and this is where the trouble begins. What was top of your mind a week ago may now be completely opaque. So, when you browse through your mail folders, looking for that vital bit of information, it seems next to impossible to recall what all those e-mail exchanges were about? Where is it? Well there is an easy solution – change the subject line . Think of it as personal tagging. It is very easy to do. First, double click the e-mail (or hit enter) to open it in a separate window. Then put your cursor on the subject line and start typing. That’s it. You can add your own reference – date, project number, whatever – or change the subject line completely. Whatever is going to be meaningful to you. Use as many words you like. When you’re done, Ctrl+S to save. “

Now why didn't I think of that myself? It is _so_ easy! Especially since the searchfunction in Outlook is way too slow for me and for some reason desktop-search engines like Google or MSN slows my laptop in a considerable way. So most of the times I need to look by hand to find something fast. Using tagging or a more sensible subjectline can save the day! Thank you Simon for that excellent tip! 

Preface: This article was intended as a question for the GTDgroup@Yahoo. But it turned out to be some sort of therapeutic writing session for my own self. I decided to share it with you. Maybe it can be of any help, maybe you have tips, pointers or similar experiences. Please, feel free to respond! This evening, I was flipping some pages in Ready for anything when one sentence hit me. It’s on page 27: Trust that you’ll see the option again whenever you need to reassess The chapter talks about putting stuff into In and review it on the Weekly Review. Now, what hit me was this… I try to use GTD both at work and at home. At work, slowly but surely, things start to run more smoother and the system starts to work. Still have troubles with Weekly reviews and really do some tasks from my NA list instead of jumping from one loose end to another but I’m trying. But…I don’t have a trusted system at home! I do have my own Inbox next to my desk. I put all mail, bills and other papers in it during the week. And every monday, I go through them, file it, decide some NA’s (call someone, make a note, send some mail) or pay the bills. I have a sort of tickler-file but I don’t look at it every day. Simply because I am not at my desk at home every day. The best place to put the ticklerfile is at my desk because most of the stuff in it requires me to be at my desk, with PC, telephone, other administration at hand. I also don’t have a filecabinet. Very simple: Don’t have room for it. I do have a lot of D-Ring Binders with old correspondence and other reference material. Now, the biggest issue is this: At home, in no place, there is something that keeps my Next Actions. I have absolutely no trusted system. Why? I don’t know. But all I have is a lot of places where I think of things (in the shower, on my bike, while shopping, in the toilet) but at that moment, I don’t have the means to put it somewhere in “In” (OK, I could keep a notebook in the toilet) so I try to remember it. Or write it down in my Moleskine. But….I don’t look in my Moleskine often enough to trust it as a part of the system. Same with my Ticklerfile: Because I don’t look at it every day, unconsciously I don’t trust it as a system. Because of that, I don’t trust anything in my house to keep my Next Actions. Because I am afraid that it will go stale and those NA’s will not get done in time. Why will they not get done in time? Beause I don’t have a trusted calendar and list of items to look at every day. I do have that at work, in Outlook. But at home, in the morning, I don’t sit behind my PC to check the calendar. I also don’t have Outlook. We do have multiple PC’s and a Powerbook. On the Powerbook we keep a calendar, but again, I don’t look at it every day. Since it’s my girlfriend’s Powerbook, I also don’t feel like I should use it for my NA’s… Now, because I don’t have these trusted systems in my house, I don’t do a Weekly Review. I mean, why should I? What’s there to review? You could call my monday-evening the Weekly Review but basically that is just going through the mail, paying bills etc. [[image:190px-thinker.png::left:0]]Bottomline how I feel about it is this: I have two “spaces” that need a system: Private and Professional. These two are mixed with eachother. I think about personal stuff at work and vice versa. But I don’t want a system that deals with both those spaces. So I need seperate systems. But that sucks. Because, if you want it to work as efficient as possible, these systems should be identical. But at work, most NA’s come from email, phone and reminders (I am a strategic consultant at an internetadvertising agency). So Outlook is a good option to work with. At home, most NA’s come from conversation, things that need to be done in and around the house, actually not from email. So Outlook is not really necessary. Because there are no real NA’s at home for me to look at, at night, after dinner, I think to myself “hmmm….I could do something here like read a book, clean a room…but what should I do first?” Because of that thinking nothing gets done… Should I start the habit to open up the PC every morning to check my NA’s at home? Should I also do that at night? What about an online list of NA’s? Maybe MyTicklerFile.com is perfect after all for use at home? Maybe I should start over with GTD and really focus on implementation at home? Damn, this thinking has again opened up a closet full of surprises for me…

From the 43Folders-discussiongroup: GTD is about habits, not software. Don’t worry about what software or outliner to use. Learn the habits first and keep it simple. How true is that! More and more I come to realize that the book is not like the Ten Commandments set in stone. What it teaches you is a way of thinking about your work and your priorities. How you handle them is completely up to you. The book reaches some ideas, but I feel it is up to myself and my personal situation how I incorporate those concepts. For instance, I don’t have a deskdrawer at work where I keep my projectmaterial. Why? Because we use special envelopes with the projectplanning on them for that material. Why would I start a new habit, a new way of organizing, when all my co-workers use another way? What did happen is I change the way I approach and use those envelopes. They are on my desk, but in a ordened manner and I can quickly find the stuff I need. New material goes directly in the right folder instead of lingering around on my desk. This is just one example. I feel I changed a lot of little habits and are more aware of the projects and actions around me than I was before. What are your changes in habits? Do you feel more aware? Leave a comment if you do!