Contents tagged with Productivity

  • Publishing Your Schedule From Outlook

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    I’m currently managing a team that uses Lotus Notes.  Because I need to use Outlook through my company’s mail server, making my schedule public – so that team members using Notes can see my schedule and schedule meetings with me – was problematic until I realised that I can have Outlook publish my schedule in standard vCalendar format.

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  • Sending Better Emails

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    Like lots of people, I tend to live in world of a gazillion emails and have a reasonable system in place for handling the flood.  However, this post at 43 Folders reminded me that I haven't put as much thought into sending mail.  I think it is well worth a read.

    Amongst the particular things I already like to do with sending emails is clarify the subject of any replies I make.  For example, if I'm sent an email with the subject of  "Team Meeting", I will modify it to "[Tue 3pm 290505] Team Meeting".  Also, I ensure that I always address the person by name, and put my name at the bottom.  Makes it so much easier when reading a long email that has gone back and forth.

    Now, I'll consider prepending "FYI: " or "RA: " or "RI: "  to the subject of every email I send, as suggested in that post.  Perhaps the first line of the body should be a legend - "(FYI=for your information, RA=request action, RI=request information)"?


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