One of the philosophies I learned from my mentors is “use what works.” In other words find what really speaks to you, use that, and leave the rest behind.
To illustrate this from my own life, last month I took a one-day seminar on time and e-mail management. I came away with some great tips and a new system to try out.
The tips, as I said, were great — definitely a time saver. Did you know you can set up template shortcuts that run from Outlook? This alone was worth the course. Now my frequently used files such as invoices and course brochures are generated with one mouse click.
Other parts of the course did not ’stick’ so to speak. It was an organization system based on Steven Covey’s book 7 Habits, using the 4 quadrants (Important/Urgent, Not Important/Urgent, etc.) I love this approach and was excited to try it.
It took me the better part of a day to set it up: the folders with the 4 quadrants, the colour coded category flags for individual messages and finally moving messages around to their new homes.
What I quickly found is that it actually took more time because each piece of e-mail required more complicated decisions:
- What quadrant does it fall into?
- Do I even want to keep it?
- What category is it?
- How easily do I need to access it again?
Within a week I went back to my original e-mail filing system which is what I learned from Sally McGee, in her book “Take Back your Life.” Her method worked well for me but was a bit out of date. Easily fixed, though.
So what is the lesson here? Be willing to explore different approaches and then use what works for you. Leave what does not work as well behind and in so doing, you will become the expert in your own life and create your own organization systems.
In case you are curious about that book, here it is:
© Deborah Redfern 2008. All rights reserved.
Posted by Deborah 
