(Archived) A New Way Of Working With My Diary Notes!

[C6REW 416]

Hi All,

 

Thought I would share my thoughts with you!

 

What I try to do in life is find easier and better ways of working with anything. With this in mind, I like to understand how other people work and see if I can learn off them. Even if I only take one part of their methods, then I have gained something.

 

It doesn't matter about the other persons skill levels or age. 'Everyone' has something to give, if you listen. A simple example. I am on a 'Detailing Forum' in the UK. This is a very intense way of cleaning a vehicle. I got some tips off a guy whose handle on the forum was 'The 13 Year Old Detailer'. I asked one day what age he was! You've guessed it, he really was 13!

 

Anyway to my new ideas!

 

Some of you will know from my previous ramblings that a key part of my Evernote use, is to have a 'Diary' Notebook. So I have a 'Diary - 2013' and a 'Diary - 2013 - Completed' Notebooks.

 

Every day a new Note is added and named by GrumpyMonkey's great and easy system. So today's Note would be 130214.

 

As a task arrives by email, phone or any other method, the task is added to the Day's Note then a tick box (to do) and line put at the bottom. The next task for the day is then added beneath it.

 

I came across a small problem that has made me re think this method. Here is the scenario:

 

Customer contacted me last year with a problem. This went in the Note for the day. I contacted the manufacturer and a number of emails where created between me, the manufacturer and the customer. Eventually the problem was solved and the task got a tick.

 

Come forward 12 months and the problem has re-occurred! So I now have a number of emails and details in a Note that has been completed. I need to see all the emails and make a decision on what to do next. No problem, if I was diligent enough to copy the emails to the Note I can go through them. As it happens I was not that diligent a year ago and had to retrieve, fairly easily, all the relevant emails from Outlook. It occurred to me that if I had a 'Projects' Notebook, which I do, I could add a sub Notebook with the customer name and problem. Send from Outlook all of the emails, which I did. I then merged all the emails,making sure they where in date order. Any new emails can be moved into the 'Project' folder and either merged or left as they are and perhaps merged at the end of the Project.

 

I then put a Note Link from the Project Note to the Diary Note and ticked the Diary Note as I will work from the Project instead. Sounds complicated but it is not!

 

Feeling really happy with this simple but neat solution I then started thinking about my 'Diary'. 

 

I can get many task in a day to deal with. Each one would go in the Days Note with a tick box and line. The more that happens in a day, the more scrolling I need to do, to get to a task. Today I will start with about 40 tasks based on emails that came in late yesterday and today already. It is only 06:53 in the UK! This is not unusual and I am certainly working on in excess of 200 tasks at any one time.

 

So back to my Days Note. If I put 40 tasks on today's Note, it is obviously going to be annoying to keep scrolling down the day. So my thoughts are changing!

 

I will create a new Note for every task, name it with the date code, customer and problem. Whilst I will have more Notes in my Diary, I am still looking at the same number of Tasks, but as an individual Note. As emails come and go to do with the task, they can easily be merged into the Note, without having to copy and paste them all the time. I can then move the email within Outlook to my 'Completed' folder to save into my CRM.

 

It feels like it will be a simpler overall solution and a much neater way of working. It also means that I can do something I have been trying to find a reason to do for a very long time! In Outlook I have a 'To Be Done' folder that I have wanted in Evernote. For various reasons this could not be done in the past. Now, I can make my 'To Be Done' Outlook folder automatically go into a new Folder in Evernote then when I get the time, create a new Diary Note with the email. The beauty of this, is I can do this from anywhere. In my old system, I would have to wait until I was sat in front of my computer to get to my Outlook. I should add that I manually move an email into the 'To Be Done' folder. Of course I have to do it manually. With up to several hundred emails coming in each day, it is important to allocate them to a specific area, either automatically or manually.

 

Hopefully you got to the end of that diatribe and you will be able to 'milk' some of the ideas for yourself. 

 

Best regards

 

 

Chris

[C6REW 416]

A very quick update.

 

I realised two things.

 

1. To automate the re - emailing of a complete folder in Outlook is very difficult

2. I need to keep some emails in my 'To Be Done' folder in Outlook.

 

So instead I have set up a 'Quick Step' in Outlook. When I select an email then click on my 'Evernote Inbox', 'Quick Step' in Outlook, it forwards the email to my Evernote folder 'Inbox' then moves the email to my 'Completed' folder in Outlook.

 

There is an additional benefit to this method. Previously I would have to move the incoming email into my 'To Be Done' folder in Outlook. Now, if it is something I am going to deal with in Evernote, I remove that step by just clicking on the 'Quick Step' action.

 

Brilliant! Another time saving exercise. 

 

Best regards

 

 

Chris