Workflow Processing: David Allen'S

Implementing DAVID ALLEN’S
Workflow Processing ®
using Microsoft Outlook
DAVID ALLEN COMPANY Solutions for the way you work and live
© The David Allen Company 2002 all rights reserved.
No part of this document may be reproduced, copied or

distributed without express permission from the David Allen Company
Contents
1 Introduction
Parts of Outlook don't work the way Microsoft thought they might............................................................................ 2
Page
Outlook has the ingredients for a personal management tool.................................................................................... 3

The principles that optimize the management of work.............................................................................................. 3
The need for simple lists........................................................................................................................................ 4
"Portabilizing" your lists.......................................................................................................................................... 4
Get very friendly with your keyboard.........................................................................................................................5
2 Setting up OUTLOOK Tasks as an Action-List Manager

New definitions of "Category" and "Task"................................................................................................................ 7
Page
Reconfigure your Task interface ............................................................................................................................. 7

The final structure ................................................................................................................................................10
Customize your Master Categories list ...................................................................................................................11
The best categories to start with ...........................................................................................................................12
Customizing your categories.................................................................................................................................. 17
Use the Task speed keys....................................................................................................................................... 17
Using the Find feature in Tasks.............................................................................................................................. 18
Expanding only the categories in play..................................................................................................................... 19
Set up the Calendar view with the same Category View of your Tasks...................................................................... 19
3 Using the Calendar Page

Time-specific actions............................................................................................................................................ 21
Day-specific actions.............................................................................................................................................. 21
Day-specific information........................................................................................................................................ 22
The speed keys for inserting calendar items...........................................................................................................24
Putting the Calendar and Tasks together functionally...............................................................................................24
4 Organizing E-mail
The fundamental success factor: operate from zero base........................................................................................ 25
Page
How to get e-mail to empty....................................................................................................................................25

About the delegating functionality built into Outlook................................................................................................ 28
Speeding up e-mail addressing............................................................................................................................. 29
5 Utilizing the Notes Functionality for Useful Lists

How it works as a list manager.............................................................................................................................. 30
Page
Setup................................................................................................................................................................... 30
Some great categories and lists.............................................................................................................................31
Cutting and pasting...............................................................................................................................................32
6 Tips about Contacts Page

Get control of your new inputs............................................................................................................................... 33
Creative use of the Find feature............................................................................................................................. 34
7 Miscellaneous Page
The RIM pager...................................................................................................................................................... 35
If you are initially setting up synchronization to the Palm......................................................................................... 35
8 Conclusion
DAVID ALLEN COMPANY Implementing David Allen’s Workflow Processing Using Microsoft® Outlook ©David Allen Company 2002 www.davidco.com
Workflow Processing
1 Introduction page 2
Many people in our client organizations and seminars have expressed interest in optimizing Microsoft
Outlook™ as their personal organizing system, utilizing the David Allen & Co. workflow management best
practices. This is a manual for setting up Outlook and using it effectively in that context.
This information will provide the greatest value if you have some familiarity with our workflow mastery model.
Many of the suggestions herein will be intuitive and common sense to anyone, but maximum power in using
Outlook lies in the understanding and implementation of our total approach. The complete delineation of
these high-performance methods of personal productivity can be found in David Allen's book, Getting Things
Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity.1
The following recommendations come from thousands of hours of one-on-one coaching with professionals
at all levels, a majority of whom work in an Outlook environment. This manual provides a tested basic set of
formats and behaviors that have proven to work as a starting point for many people. We suggest you try it
out and then tweak the system to fit your own needs and preferences. Much room remains for experimen-
tation and customization, and no two clients of ours wind up with exactly the same configurations and pro-
cedures in place.
The setup instructions work with Outlook 2000, and if you have an older version there may be some slight
differences in the location of dialog boxes, etc.
Parts of Outlook don't work the way Microsoft thought they might
Two potentially powerful functions in Outlook-Tasks and Notes-are universally underutilized. Tasks and Notes
can be employed to great benefit, but only by understanding a very different way to think about "Tasks" and
"Notes" than is evident by simply booting up the software or reading about it. Less than 1% of all the Outlook
users that we have coached have been using the Tasks or Notes functions in any systematic and effective
way before they work with us.
The Tasks area was designed as an informal project manager, keeping track of tasks grouped by the project
they're about. It also embodies a lot of complex features related to percentage complete, status, and dele-
gating and tracking tasks to others. However, the way people actually work doesn't usually fit this model suf-
ficiently to make it worth the effort to keep it appropriately populated with real items in real time. In other
words, it only works if your "inner geek" shows up with ample time to play around with all the connections
and features.
The Notes function seems to have been designed as a simple little "idea collector" with its own area, much
like having a whiteboard on which to park your sticky notes. But there was, in contrast to the over-building
of Tasks, almost no functionality built into the Notes usage.
1
Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity; Viking, New York; 2001, hardback. Available from booksellers or at www.gettingthingsdone.com.
1. Introduction page 3
Outlook has the ingredients for a personal management tool

Outlook has sufficient power and features built in already to enable the structuring of a very powerful and
useful personal system. The trick is to know which ones to ignore and which to use, and how to customize
that usage to fit with the best practices of workflow management.
The overbuilt Task function can be simplified or as we say, "dumbed down," to be a simple but powerful list
manager, and as such can be quite effective in organizing reminders in a way that really works in real time.
And the flat little sticky Notes can be turbo-charged with some very useful reference material and checklists,
adding sophistication to your personal management. Also there are some simple things to do to manage e-
mail and the calendar that enhance their functionality and tie the whole inventory of work tracking together
into a seamless integrated system.
The principles that optimize the management of work

In order to understand our specific recommendations for Outlook setup and usage and to maximize its poten-
tial in practice, it's important to clarify some simple but powerful productivity behaviors. These are funda-
mental to the success of the system, and Outlook cannot do them for you! They are basic disciplines in man-
aging work flow that must become part of your ongoing work habits, in order to generate the appropriate
contents for your lists. If you don't engage in these behaviors, don't fault the organizing software! The lists
will be incomplete and not give you enough payoff of relaxed control to keep you motivated to maintain them.
1. Don't leave anything in your head or in unprocessed stacks
If your system contains only partial information, it won't give you the payoff of a system, and you won't be
motivated to maintain it. (E.g. if your "Calls" list doesn't have every single call you need to make, your head
will still have to keep remembering and reminding about the rest of them, and trying to keep only some of
them in Outlook will be too much work for the minimal benefit you'll gain.)
2. Decide the next physical action
If you don't determine the very next action needed on a task or project or an e-mail, you won't know where
to park the reminder, and the decision-still-needed pressure will cause you to avoid engaging with your lists.
(E.g. "Set meeting with the team" needs to be further delineated as "Call Ana Maria to set meeting" on your
Calls list, or "E-mail team for best meeting dates" on your At Computer list, or "Talk to Jessie re: team meet-
ing" on your Agendas for Assistant list.)
3. Review and update the contents of the whole system regularly
A system is only as trustworthy and beneficial as it is current, consistent, and complete. The more the sys-
tem can be kept up to date as you go along, the more "alive" and supportive it will be to allow your mind to
focus on the work at hand. The world will probably come at you faster than you can keep it totally processed
and organized, but you can't let it slip too long before you catch up. The reminders of projects and action-
able items must be cleaned up and refreshed at least every seven days.2
2
See our Web site (www.davidco.com) for The Weekly Review (in Gear, Tips and Tools).
The need for simple lists
Once you have appropriately processed your "stuff," simple lists will store most of your reminders and ref-
erence information. These can be "flat" lists - not tied or related to other things, nor sorted by priority or
urgency…just lists. You need a list of projects, a list of all the calls you need to make, a list of all the things
you are waiting for to come back from other people, etc. You may also want lists of your key objectives for
the year, your favorite movies to rent, and all the things you might want to pack whenever you take a trip.
The Tasks section can be a terrific list manager for your actionable items and the Notes area can serve as a
very functional catalog of checklists and reference material.
"Portabilizing" your lists
Another key success factor to using Outlook for personal management is having an easy way to publish the
lists into some portable format (and the behavior of actually doing that when needed). Any personal organiz-
er will function at a much higher level when it contains everything that might be needed for a reminder any-
where (vs. some at the office, some at home, some in your briefcase, some in your head, etc.) It will need to
contain a list of errands you need to run when you're out and about, things to talk with your spouse about
when you're with them, and things to do at home when you have some time in that environment. And if you
subliminally know that your lists may not be with you when you might use them (such as your Calls list avail-
able whenever you have free time and a phone), you won't be motivated to keep them populated and cur-
rent.
There are two ways to make this work:
1. Synchronize to a PDA
You can set up Outlook to synchronize with the Palm or any WinCE/Pocket PC handheld device. It can also
download to a RIM device, though at this writing all your Tasks would meld into one list on the Blackberry,
which limits the remote list-management capability you might want. In our experience coaching hundreds of
Outlook users, the easiest tool for distributing your Outlook lists is the Palm. It is just the kind of basic list
manager required, and is not as over-built as the WinCE or Pocket PC devices. When you configure Tasks as
we suggest, you will create lists as Categories, and these will map one to one to the To-Do lists on the Palm.
Similarly your lists in Notes will map to the Memo function on the Palm.
Any PDA can work, as long as you work it, but for the more complex PDA's the list-management habits have
to be more rigorously applied. Whatever system you use very soon has to be on "automatic," i.e. you're just
using it, not thinking about how to use it, and not trusting your head more than the tool.
2. Print your lists into hard copy

Instead of using a PDA, some people choose to print out appropriate action-reminder lists into hard copy,
including their calendar, to carry with them when they leave their computer. They then hand-edit those lists
as they move around, in meetings, at home, or traveling, updating Outlook when they are back at their work-
stations. This can work fine, and in some cases with some people, because of the additional visibility and
note-adding capability of paper lists, better than a digital version.
Get very friendly with your keyboard
The ease of making entries ad hoc, as things occur to you, will make or break the usage of Outlook for action
management. The system should work almost as quickly as you think, or it won't hold up to keep you cur-
rent. Subliminal resistance to your data entry process usually creates a barrier for using any digital tool as a
total system. The faster you are at the keyboard, the more you will be able to use Outlook as a highly lever-
aged personal productivity device. It is not just an arithmetic curve-it is at least geometric. As your cap-
ture/process/think tool and behaviors come closer to matching the speed with which your mind can shift its
focus and generate new ideas, they will foster and facilitate that thinking at an increasing rate and quality.
When the techniques in this manual are just being used and no longer thought about consciously, you will
have entered a very different world of personal productivity. It's hard to imagine the power of it until you've
tasted it.
Using the speed key combinations (instead of the mouse) for the small number of regular commands for cre-
ating and storing new entries will make the process at least four times faster. Learn and use both the stan-
dard Windows and the Outlook-specific key combinations.3
If you aren't using them already, make the standard universal Windows speed-key combinations habitual. The
ability to cut and paste portions of e-mails, telephone numbers, and documents as attached notes to items
on your lists will provide tremendous usefulness to your system. And switching between open applications to
follow through on your workflow thoughts as you have them makes you more productive.
Standard Windows speed key combinations
■ <Ctrl> a - Select the whole document

■ <Ctrl> c - Copy whatever is selected to clipboard
■ <Ctrl> x - Cut whatever is selected to the clipboad
■ <Ctrl> v - Paste what's in the clipboard to the cursor location
■ <Ctrl> p - Print
■ <Ctrl> z - Undo
■ Alt-Tab - Switch between open Windows applications
3
Some of these will be listed later in the appropriate sections of this manual.
Outlook-specific speed keys

The speed keys for most menu functions within an application are the underlined letter, usually in combina-
tion with the Alt key. Some of the Outlook speed-key combinations we will suggest later in this document may
not fit exactly with your version and toolbar views. Experiment to find which ones match your setup.
Using some combinations for navigating within Outlook itself will increase your productivity for action man-
agement:
■ <Ctrl+Shift> k - opens new Task
■ <Ctrl+Shift> n - opens new Note
■ <Ctrl+Shift> m - opens new e-mail message
■ <Ctrl+Shift> e - creates a new e-mail folder
■ <Ctrl+Shift> i - moves you to the e-mail inbox
■ <Ctrl+Shift> b - opens your address book
Other navigation speed tips

Create open windows for Email, Tasks, and Calendar…so you can Alt-Tab between these applications
instantly as your thinking moves between them. Right-click on Inbox, Calendar, and Tasks, one at a time, and
check Open in New Window. Then Alt-Tab will switch you from one to the other in a flash.
Create command icons on your Outlook toolbar…as another option (to speed keys) so you can click on your
toolbar for new Tasks, new Notes, and opening various views. Go to View, Toolbars, Customize. Select the
"commands tab." On the left side under "categories" select any one of those listed and a unique list of icons
will appear with "commands" that you can add to the tool bar. To add, highlight a command and left click,
drag the item to the toolbar.
How's your typing speed?

We highly recommend that you get up to a typing speed of at least 50 words per minute. If you are not there
yet, we strongly suggest you install and practice with a good software typing tutor.4 Your keyboard is becom-
ing at least as important as your phone as a communication device (with yourself as well as with others). Your
computer can be a strategic "think station" and especially so when there is little or no effort in getting a
thought into it. Increasing your ease and speed with your inputting device may have more payoffs than you
think.
No matter how fast voice-recognition is advancing in the digital world, it will be a long time (if ever!) that you
will not need the keyboard. Our estimate is that, much like the need to process paper has actually increased
since the advent of computers, the need to manipulate data with a keyboard will increase along with voice-
recognition technology.
4
A great one is "Typing Master®," available from most any software supplier.
Setting up Outlook Tasks as an
2 Action List Manager page 7
Using the TASKS function as an action-list manager works extremely well, if you configure the View appro-
priately and use Task entries and Categories differently than was originally intended. (Caution: we recom-
mend you don't try to do both-that is, use them for action reminder lists and the informal project manage-
ment tool it was initially designed for. A hybrid configuration would be very difficult to manage.)
New definitions of "Category" and "Task"
Using our method, you must redefine "Category" as list title and "Task" as list item. In other words, the
Categories will represent the various lists (such as "Projects", "Calls", "At Home", etc.), and the "New Task"
dialog will be the place to enter anything that goes on any of those lists. By attaching it to a Category (i.e. a
list title) you will in effect put something on that list. (This will be much clearer when you actually try it out.)
Reconfigure your Task interface
In order to configure the Task section appropriately for this, take these steps:
1. Clean up the TASK section

Get rid of any miscellaneous entries currently in TASKS. You can do this by either deleting or removing cat-
egories from the tasks in each of your existing categories. You will not want to build a new configuration
with old "stuff" still resident in your Tasks. The first thing to do is look for any entries that you may have, and
either
(a)Print them out in hard copy and toss into your in-basket for later reprocessing into your new system
(recommended), then select all categories, right click on the selected list, then select "Delete,"or
(b)Leave the entries you have in there, but keep them uncategorized, i.e. with no Category assigned to them.
You can do this by collapsing the list down to only categories, then select all the categories, right click on
the selected list, select "Categories," and uncheck all the checked boxes. Later, these entries will show
up in a single section called "Categories: (none)" which can function as an in-basket and should remind
you to rethink what's still in there and distribute the results appropriately.
2. Change to View by Categories

Go to the Task section of Outlook. Click View, Current View, By Category.
3. Change the Fields in the view

Click Customize Current View (View, Current View, Customize Current View). That will bring up the View
Summary dialog with various buttons on the left. Click on the Fields button to bring up the Show Fields dia-
log. Use the Add and Remove buttons and the "drag-and-drop" mouse feature to set up the "Show these
fields…" list box as follows:
2. Action List Manager page 8
1. Complete
2. Subject These are the fields you want to wind up with (in order).
3. Notes
4. Due Date
You can add any of

these fields you don't
already have in your
view by selecting
them from the list on
the left and clicking
Add. You will need to
remove the fields you
do not want by select-
ing them in the right
box and clicking
Remove. You can then
order the fields as
shown here by click-
ing and dragging the
fields up or down in
the list box.
4. Filter the View

CCurrent
lick Customize
View (View,
The Filter feature will set up the Task window to allow you to check off
Current View, Customize something as "done," and the item will disappear off your list, to be dis-
Current View). That will played in another view called Completed items.5
bring up the View
Summary dialog with
various buttons on the
left. Click on the Filter
button.
5
If you need to retrieve an item you’ve clicked as Done, return to View/Current View/Completed Tasks. Double-click the entry and change the Status from
"Completed" to "In Progress." That will return the item to your initial action list. Restore your View by Category.
■ Then click on the Advanced tab.

■ Click on the Field button on the left side in the middle of the box.
■ Click Frequently-used fields.
Click Complete (5th one down the list

in Outlook 2000).
The default Condition and Value will automatically

be filled in with Complete, Equals, and No,
which you want to keep.
Then click the Add to List button.
Then OK out, and accept the

criteria with Yes in the alert box.
Then OK back to the View Summary dialog.
5. Sort the items automatically

You have the option of sorting your lists in Tasks in several ways. The most useful might be to list them
alphabetically, by due date, or by priority (we have coached clients who have, for various reasons, found it
more functional one way than the other). We recommend starting out listing them alphabetically, and only
changing that if one of the other options makes more sense for how you use it.
■ Keeping the View Summary dialog open, click on the Sort button.
■ In the first box (Sort items by), click the arrow and insert Subject. Ensure that Ascending is checked.
■ In the second box (Then by), insert Due Date. Ensure that Ascending is checked.
■ The third box can be left as (none).
■ Then OK back to the View Summary dialog box.
(Feel free to change this sorting formula later as desired, as you gain more familiarity with the system.)
6. Ensure that you can edit within the fields
Keeping the View Summary box open, click on the Other Settings button. Ensure that "Allow in-cell
editing" is checked. (That is a default setting for Outlook.)
Then OK back to the View Summary box and OK out to the Outlook main window.
7. Tweak the size of the fields in the Tasks view

Ensure that the "Tasks" view is still selected on the Menu Bar, then change the size of the Notes and Due
Date fields.
In the Tasks view, move the column edges in the Fields bar at the top so that the Due Date is about one
inch from the right edge, and the Notes field is about three inches wide. (Click and drag on the edges of
the columns: Specifically, drag the left edge of the "Notes" column to the left, and the left edge of the “Due
Date” column to the right to create the appropriate widths.)
The final structure
If you have followed these instructions, the separate items on the list will have these components and
characteristics:
■ The box on the left can be checked off when the item is completed, and the item will disappear off the list.
■ The Subject will contain the list item.
■ The Notes field will let you know whether there are additional comments attached to the item. (If there are, you will know
to open up the Task for more details. If not, no need to bother.)
■ The Due Date field will show you that information, if relevant.
Customize your Master Categories list
You want to merely click on a Category in your master list when you enter a new Task to send it to the appro-
priate list. Here's how to customize that list so it's most functional:
1. Bring up a new Task dialog by selecting File, New, New Task or using the key combination Cntl+Shift K.
2. Click the Categories button in the lower right of the Task dialog.
3. Click the Master Category List button in the lower right of the Categories dialog.
4. In the Master Category List, click to select an unused category, then use the Delete button to remove the
category. To remove a sequence of categories, hold down the Shift button when selecting. Microsoft gives
you many default categories that you will not need or use, so don't hesitate to dump them all. Caution: If
you are using Categories in any other part of Outlook (such as Contacts) they will show up in this Master
list. Do not delete any of the categories that are functional for you elsewhere.
5. Add the categories you want to use. (Type in the new category title in the text box at the top of the dialog,
and click the Add button.)
These are the Categories we suggest you set up initially:

@Agendas
@Anywhere
@Calls
@Computer
@Errands
@Home
@Office
@Waiting For
Projects
Someday/Maybe
Note: Be sure to include the "@" symbol in the first 8 category names above. Use of this symbol is explained
in the "best categories" below.
Caution: Avoid clicking the "Reset" button on the Master Category List editing box. It will revert everything
to the default categories that Outlook starts with.
The best categories to start with
If you are familiar with our methodology, you will recognize that the categories above represent the lists we
recommend for managing actionable items. Here is a brief description of them, along with some best prac-
tices:
The action lists
To move things forward, you must decide the next action required. If you don't do or delegate the action, you
need to keep track of it as a reminder for yourself to view and assess for follow-up action, at the appropri-
ate time. The best practice for organizing these reminders is to sort them by the critical context (i.e. the cat-
egories) needed for the action. Does it require a phone? A computer? Do you have to be at home to do it?
Do you need to be "out and about" doing errands? Our recommended categories are the most common con-
texts, and have proven to be the most functional for thousands who have implemented our system.
We recommend the lists of next actions begin with the "@" symbol. It places them at the top of the Master
Category list and signifies they are the real physical action reminders that you can work from whenever you
have discretionary time.
@Agendas
This category lists the separate people you will be communicating with in real time (face to face or on the
phone) and meetings coming toward you, for which you are collecting things to talk about when you are there,
and perhaps to place on an agenda beforehand.
Using the Task dialog, create a separate Task for each person you interact with regularly (boss, spouse, assis-
tant, direct reports, consultants, coaches, etc.) with his or her name in the "Subject" line. In the Task Tab, use
the Notes box underneath the Subject for collecting the separate agenda items to go over with them the next
time you meet in person or on the phone.
You could easily have fifteen or twenty people and meetings that you are tracking this way--your direct
reports, your boss, your assistant, your spouse, the weekly staff meeting, the monthly board meeting, etc.
Many times the next action on a

project is to talk to someone when
you are with them, and this Outlook
feature provides a perfect "parking
lot" for your agenda items until they
are communicated. You will need to
select and delete these items in the
Notes field when they are no longer
current. A current Agenda is very
handy to implement on your PDA
and keep with you at all times, in
case you intersect with these people
or think of something to talk to them
about ad hoc. It is also easy to print
out a single list if you want to walk
into the meeting with hard copy for
note taking.
If you have one very key person in your world, with whom you are constantly in touch about many differ-
ent things, it might make sense to create another category for just that person's agenda items. In other
words, if your boss is Susan, and much of your job consists of back and forth communications with her,
consider creating an @Susan category. Then you can enter items to talk with her about as separate Tasks,
categorized as @Susan, just like @Calls or @Computer.
Be careful, though, because if you start to create more than one or two people as categories, you will
undermine the simplicity of the user interface of your action lists in Tasks, and not be able to synch to the
Palm, which limits you to fifteen categories. One or two key contact people would work, but group the rest
under the @Agendas category (with a person as a Task, and agenda notes underneath) to keep it func-
tional.
(This will be much easier to grasp by actually going ahead and setting some of them up right now - i.e.
create separate Tasks for each person you know you might have some things to go over with, and each
meeting coming toward you that you are likely to have some agendas for. Assign each to the @Agendas
category. Then think of some of those topics and things to cover, and insert them underneath the appro-
priate person or meeting in the Notes section.)
@Anywhere
An action that can be accomplished without any restriction about where it's done would go on this list. Typical
examples would be "Draft ideas re: corporate culture change" (if you like doing that by hand with pen and
paper instead of at the computer) or "Review the Richardson proposal" if you are keeping it in your briefcase.
@Calls
Place reminders of calls you need to make in this category, if they can be made from any phone. If you are
highly mobile, take the time to type or cut and paste the phone number on the Subject line as well. Having
the number already on your @Call list on your PDA makes it a lot easier to make the call when you are mov-
ing around than having to look each one of them up.
Some professionals have literally dozens of calls on this list at any one time, and a few find it useful to sort
them to make them easier to scan on the run. Here are some options:
■ Sort all your Tasks by Priorities, and put your hottest calls to make and return as High. That puts them at
the top of the group of @Calls.
■ Create more than one Category of calls, e.g. @Calls-Clients, @Calls-Company, @Calls-Personal.
■ Start the Subject of the most important/urgent calls with a prefix like "@". If your Tasks are being sorted
alphabetically, it throws those to the top of the list automatically. If you want to get even more specific,
start the hottest ones with "@@".
■ Create a code for the time zone of the person to call, so all your calls to Asia or Europe are grouped
together for reaching during those unique hours.
The @Calls list(s) can be effectively utilized with support staff that has access to your Tasks on the comput-
er. If you arrange the proper protocols with them, they can leave phone messages for you to return into your
version of Outlook, you synch to your PDA, and the list of calls with relevant number and data are ready and
waiting, already on your lists along with all the others. You could also create an "@incoming calls" category,
to reserve the decision-making about what to do about them for yourself.
@Computer
If the action requires the computer, place it here. E-mails to send, documents to edit or draft, spreadsheets
to develop, Web sites to visit, data to review, etc. This list then comes into play whenever you are at your
computer(s) with any discretionary time. Even if you only have a computer in the office, it's still convenient
to have this list separate from your @Office list of things to do, because you wouldn't need to look at this list
when the server is down. Also, when you are in "computer mode", it is sometimes nice to just crank through
all the computer stuff you need to deal with, with a single log-on.
If you carry a laptop and are frequently in situations where you can work on the computer but aren't con-
nected to your server or the Web, you might consider creating a separate @Computer-Web category. The
regular @Computer list would hold anything you could do, whether or not you were wired in, and the
@Computer-Web list would have everything that required a good connection. This is handy because on a
plane you don't have to keep rethinking which things you can and can't do on your laptop from your
@Computer list, and when you get to a good connection at a hotel or in your office, you can work through
the @Computer-Web list while you are able.
@Errands
This holds reminders of things that you need to do when you are "out and about"-stop by the bank, take
something to the tailor, buy something at a store, etc. If you are likely to think of more than one thing to do
or get at one of those locations (like the hardware store), make "Hardware store" the task Subject and put
your running list of things to get/do there in the Notes field below.
If you are a regular road warrior, you might consider having two errands lists-one for things you could do any-
where, in any city; and one for errands that have to be run where you live.
@Home
This list is for next actions that have to be done in your home environment. Gather tax receipts, repair the
cabinet door, clean up the tool shed, etc. It would also hold reminders of calls that you have to make, if you
have to be at home to make the call. (Of course this only works if you have this list with you when you're
actually at home!)
@Office
These are the next actions that require you being at your office. It could be calls that you have to make from
your desk because of the materials you need for the call. Purge your files, review information stored in your
office, scan some documents, and look something up in the corporate library would be be examples of the
kind of items you would want to have on this list.
@Waiting For
This list keeps track of all the actions, projects, and deliverables that you want to happen but which are some-
one else's responsibility. It could be something you've ordered that hasn't come yet, something you've hand-
ed off to your assistant for which you're waiting on a response, or something your boss is supposed to be
finding out before you can move forward on a key project.
This list should be reviewed as necessary (at least in the Weekly Review), triggering appropriate actions on
your part to follow up, light a fire, or just check the status.
Some tips for your "Waiting For's":

■ Start the Subject line with the name or initials of the person or party who's got the action. Then
(if you are sorting alphabetically) it will group all the Waiting For's from one source together on
the list. When you have meetings with your direct reports, you will want to review the outstan-
ding items on their plate to ensure a proper updating conversation, before things become over
due.
■ Include the date of the handoff in the Subject line. This is critical information for later, when you
want to know how long the ball's been in their court.
A working example of the "@Waiting For" category is illustrated below.
Projects
This category should hold the list of the normally 30 to 100 active commitments you could have
on your plate at any point in time that require more than one action to complete. "Implement new
performance review process," "Hire VP Marketing," and "Replace tires on the van" would be
examples. This should be reviewed in detail at least weekly, generating the next kick-start actions
to be listed on your @action lists. You create and maintain it the same way that you have creat-
ed your other "@" lists, but it needs a somewhat different and more elevated focus.
The Notes section attached to each project is a perfect place to jot "back of the envelope" thoughts about
the project, simple bulleted-list components, etc.
This Projects list is the most important list to establish, maintain, and review. It is the lynchpin of the Weekly
Review, and provides the cornerstone for managing your day-to-day operational life. Using it to regularly gen-
erate all your next actions to populate your @action lists relieves the pressure of incessantly thinking about
what you need to be thinking about.
Someday/Maybe
These are the things you might want to do at some point in the future, but with no commitment to move on
it at present. "Take a watercolor class," "Get an MBA," "Learn Italian" would be examples. When you have
done a thorough inventory of all your projects, some of them might need to be shuttled to this category, to
await action until you have a more appropriate window.
Customizing your categories
The categories we have suggested should serve as a starting point. Some people find they don't need an
@Computer and @Office as separate lists, if they only have a computer at work. Some executives find a
Projects-Delegated category useful as a high-level "waiting for" list, and executive support staff often can
use a category "Meetings to Schedule".
Use the Task speed keys
■ <Cntl+Shift> k - opens New Task dialog (from anywhere in Outlook)

■ <Alt> g - opens Master Category list dialog (for categorizing Task) when you are working in the Task dialog
■ <Alt> s - saves new or changed Task properties, then closes the Task dialog
And any button that appears with a bold label in a dialog box may be activated with the <Enter> key.
So, here is the series of keystroke combinations to get used to, for entering new items in your lists:
■ <Ctrl+Shift> k - to open a new Task dialog
■ Type in the content of the item on the Subject line in the Task tab
■ <Alt> g - to bring up the Categories dialog when in the Task dialog
■ Use the down arrow key (or click with your mouse) to highlight the desired category, and check the selected category by
hitting the SPACE bar6
■ <Enter> - Clicks the "OK" button
■ <Alt> s - puts the Task dialog away (saving and closing Task information)
6
It is possible even to eliminate this mouse click if you type the first letter of the Category and hit the space bar (e.g. hit "P" and the space bar and it will click
the Projects category). However, if you are using the "@" symbol for your action lists, it won’t work for them.
This series will work anywhere within Outlook, so you could be in the middle of reading e-mails and suddenly
remember you need to call Robin, and within a few seconds it could be on your @Calls list and synched to
your PDA, without hindering your workflow.
Using the Find feature in Tasks
It is helpful to be able to find items within your Tasks rapidly, using the <Alt> i speed keys. First, if you imple-
ment this methodology completely, you will likely have at least 100-200 actions and projects, which, at least
initially, makes it difficult to remember if you have entered a phone call you need to make or a project you
remember you have. Searching all your tasks in a flash with <Alt> i and whatever key word you want to
find makes this very easy.
It also offers an informal means of tying together all the actions you may have anywhere in your Tasks relat-
ed to a single topic or project. If you have the discipline to code your entries with a unique abbreviation for
the project they refer to, you can then search for that code and it will instantly display all of them in one
screen. For instance, your 2002 budget could be "b2," which you could enter in any action or agenda item
about that. Then <Alt> i + "b2" + <Enter> would get them all at a glance.
The major conceptual problem people have with our workflow methodology is that next actions are arranged
by the context required for the action, not the project they relate to, and many people want to feel comfort-
able that they have some way to find everything related to one project easily. In fact, what people want to see
is a project plan to feel like there is an overview of the project's progress somewhere. The next actions are
usually more detailed and move much faster than what's on a plan - they just need to get decided and put
somewhere that gets them done. The Weekly Review is what ties the whole thing together, ensuring that you
have actions on all the active parts of your projects.
In Outlook you could categorize "Call Joe re: budget meeting" as both @Call and Budget, since you can tie
an entry to more than one category. That would give you the best of both worlds (actions grouped by their
project and by their context). But in reality, if that were a consistent behavior (doubtful because of the extra
work) you would have an outrageous and unwieldy number of categories in Tasks (one for each project plus
the context lists). It would be totally dysfunctional in the Palm and cumbersome at best in a WinCE PDA. If
you really think you need some digital tie between actions and their projects, try the "coding and Find" pro-
cedure described under the Find Feature heading above.
Expanding only the categories in play
One of the greatest things about organizing your lists in the way we recommend is that you only need to see
or review certain lists at certain times. Then, instead of seeing rather amorphous blobs of "things to do" with
unspecified actions, you need only be reminded of clear things to do when they can possibly be done. This
makes life much simpler when you are in the thick of your operational day.
For instance, though you may have 50+ "Projects", if you have done a thorough review of them recently
enough and tracked the next actions on each one, you can hide that list until you need to catch up with a
review again. (You can't do a project - only the action steps about it.) If you are in your office, expand only
@Anywhere, @Calls, @Computer, and @Office, because you can't really do anything else on your lists there.
@Agendas would only open up when you knew you were going to interface with one of the people on that
list. If you go out for lunch and have a cell phone with you, you would then only need to see @Anywhere,
@Errands, and @Calls.
Set up the Calendar View with the same Category View of your Tasks
Many people find it very functional to create the same Task view of their actions and projects, visible next to
their calendar for the day. This provides a very effective work screen and think station. The calendar shows
what has to get done during the day - the "hard landscape" -- whereas the Tasks provide an overview of all
the other things to pick from when the calendar leaves any open time. For instance, if your schedule shows
a block of time between 2:30 and 4:00, at 2:30 you would first review your "day-specific" actions at the top
of the day's calendar; and once those were handled, you could review your @Calls and @Computer list for
things that need doing "as soon as you have time to get to them."
To set up this Calendar view you must include a Task view setup that duplicates what you previously did
in Tasks (i.e., it doesn't automatically restructure this Task portion of your Calendar view when you change
the Task setup).
1. Structure the view of this Calendar

■ View - Current View - Click Day/Week/Month
■ View - TaskPad View - Click "All Tasks"
2. Structure the Task view

■ Right-click the TaskPad bar. Click "Customize Current View". Then proceed setting the Fields,
■ Filter, and Sort as you would with the initial Task setup we've recommended.
By clicking and dragging the left border of the Tasks, you will expand or contract the box to include more
or less months in view above.
Using The
3 Calendar page 21
The best practices we recommend with the Outlook calendar include using it for three kinds of items:
time-specific actions, day-specific actions, and day-specific information. It is rare to find someone who fully
utilizes the latter two functions to their advantage. But with these appropriately filled out, the day page will
represent the "hard landscape" for your day and will provide a trusted foundation at a glance for moment-
to-moment orientation about "what's next?"
Time-specific actions
Appointments are a straightforward matter. No mystery here.
Day-specific actions
Often there will be things that need to happen sometime during the day, but not at a specific time. These
need to be tracked in a place that you will notice as soon as you have any time when you're not scheduled.
Examples would be:
1. A call you have to make before you leave for the day
2. Something that you have to finish and submit or mail by the end of the day
3. An agenda you must cover with someone before they leave the office
You will undoubtedly make commitments like this: "José, I'll call you sometime Monday about that." (Any
time Monday would be fine, but it can't hold over until Tuesday.) And many times you will be working on
something in the morning, and get a request or have something show up that must be fulfilled before the
sun goes down, but you can't stop doing what you're doing at the moment. Instead of stapling a note to your
forehead, adding it to the pile of Post-it's on your desk or screen, or (worse) filing it in psychic RAM, do this:
Make it an "all-day event" at the top of your daily calendar page (see window shot on next page).
Just click on the date bar at the top of the page and fill in the subject line with the action required, and save.
It will show up as a discrete grayed bar at the top. (Unfortunately they are the same color gray as the date
bar at the top. Just get used to it.) These reminders should represent to you the same kind of commitment
as your appointments. So, as soon as you have any open window at all, you should try to complete these
before anything else.
We have worked with very senior professionals whose days are so filled with these intensely short-turn-
around actions required, they often wind up with ten to twenty of these "got-to's" at the top of their daily cal-
endar. The good news is that they have it all in one place, and it allows for a much more controlled overview
of the game while all the action is going on. (Some executive assistants have found it very useful to put their
boss's name as one of those items, with a running attached note with all the agendas they have to cover
with him or her before they escape the office at the end of the day.)
3. Using the Calendar page 22
Sometimes an action item on one of your Task lists will age to the point where it must now be done on, or
by, a specific day coming up on your calendar. A useful feature in Outlook is to click and drag that task
over the Calendar button in the Folder List navigator (or the Calendar icon in the Outlook Shortcuts menu
bar, for those who use it), and you can then make it a day-specific item on your calendar by clicking the
All-day event box and inserting the proper date. It will then show up in the top bars for that designated
day.
If the appointments and day-specific actions can be trusted to be the complete picture, there are many
times there is truly no need to review any other lists or options of actions - the day is more than filled with
those elements of the "hard landscape." It will also be quite reassuring to you to be able to trust that if
something would die if it weren't done, it would be right there on the calendar.
Day-specific information
The third type of entry that should make it onto your calendar is information that you want to know or be
reminded of that day - not necessarily something to do. This should also be inserted as an "event" bar at
the top of the page (sharing space with the day-specific actions), or attached as a note to the appointment
it may refer to.
There are hundreds of types of things that fall into this category. Some of the most common of these are:
Attachments to time-specific actions
■ locations of and directions to meetings

■ reminders of things to take to meetings
■ reservation #'s
■ phone #'s at meeting locations
Event-bar items: (see window at right)
1. Key events of interest happening that

day:
■ things that might disrupt the work

environment (server shut-downs, office
moves, etc.)
■ External events to be aware of
(marathons, elections, heads of state
visits, etc.)
■ Things you're not committed to, but
which you might want to participate in
(TV specials, cultural or social events,
organization events, etc.)
■ Activities of other significant people of
interest to you (spouses, bosses, assis
tants and staff-vacations, extracurricu
lar activities, etc.)
2. "tickler" information, such as a

prospective client who asked you to
call back "after next week"
3. "drop dead" dates and red flags for

due items, such as:
■ tickets or paper needed by that date
■ critical advance notice of deadlines

("two days until budget due")
The speed keys for inserting calendar items:
<Ctrl-Shift> a - new item for the calendar

And for day-specific actions and information on the top bars:
<Ctrl-Shift> a - new item
<Alt> y - all day event
<Alt> r - removes reminder (otherwise it will flag it just after midnight)
2nd - check the

got-to-do’s and info
specific to the day
3rd - check what

else might be
done from the
as-soon-as-
1st - check the possible lists
hard timeline
edges
Putting the Calendar and Tasks together functionally
The combination of this kind of workstation/screen view with the speed key facility to insert items almost
as fast as they occur to you creates an elegant way to stay focused amidst the intensity of your daily oper-
ations.
Organizing
4 E-MAIL page 25
For most people Outlook e-mail represents the weakest link in their personal organization system, because
of its volume and incessancy. By applying the David Allen & Co. workflow principles, however, it can be con-
trolled and integrated into the whole workflow practice.
The fundamental success factor: operate from zero base
The master key for managing e-mail is the hardest habit for many to change-working from a regularly empty
in-basket. It requires the least amount of psychic effort to operate from a zero base than from a thousand
base. That doesn't mean that the in-basket in e-mail is kept at zero-just that it gets there on some regular
basis (at least once a week).7 The problem is that most people do not have a system for managing their e-
mails beyond the in-basket area, so if they can't move on or finish dealing with the e-mail right then, they
will leave it in "in" as the safest place.
In order to evaluate the actions embedded in your e-mail against all the other actions you need to take, you
must be able to see reminders of those actions quickly and completely, along with all the rest. This is tough
enough for the most organized, but almost impossible to do with more than a screen full of e-mails lying
amorphously in "in."
How to get e-mail to empty
You process e-mail in the same way you do any other item in an in-basket. You delete it, file it as reference,
respond to it in the moment, hand it off to someone else to handle, or stage a reminder of what you need to
do with it in an action-reminder kind of system.
1. Delete
Please learn where your <DEL> key is, and use it! (<Ctrl> d works fast, too). Get rid of the e-mails that you
have no use for after reading them. (Your IT folks will love you for it, and it will shrink your in-basket a ton.)
If you have more than 500 e-mails, your quickest way to purge is to sort by the From field (click the From
column header). You can often then dump a bunch from the same source at one time. (In your weekly review,
remember also to click on the Deleted Items in the Folders List navigator, use the Cntl+Shift+A combination
to select all deleted messages, and go up to the "X" icon on the Tool Bar to delete them all from Outlook).
2. File
Get over your allergy (if you have one) to making reference files in your navigator bar. That is its purpose-to
give you a simple storage system for e-mail you need to keep for archive purposes. With the Inbox selected,
organize by theme, topic, project, person, or however it makes the most sense to you.
7
If the Good Fairy showed up and disappeared all the e-mails in your in-basket, within two weeks you would probably have exactly the same number you cur-
rently have. It’s not a matter of how many you get but rather your comfort zone with how many unprocessed e-mails you will tolerate before you have to do
something about them.
4. Organizing E-Mail page 26
Use <Ctrl>-Shift e to make a new folder fast.
3. Do
The two-minute rule that we teach is magic. With few exceptions, any e-mail that can be responded to in
less than two minutes should be dispatched the first time you see it. You should obviously delete whatever
you can; but if you're going to respond to it at all and it takes less than two minutes, it'll take you longer than
that to store it, open it up and read it again than it will be to handle it on the front end. (Think of yourself as
being made of Teflon, when it comes to two-minute-or-less actions!)
4. Delegate
If someone else needs to take the action about an e-mail, hand it off to them. Ideally, that should be done
right away, unless it is going to take significantly longer than two minutes to forward it. We recommend also
that (if you care about a result from the handoff) you track it, and an easy way to do that is to cc: or bcc:
yourself when you send a delegating e-mail. That will give you a copy immediately back into your own in-
basket, which you can then track in a Waiting For folder or as an @Waiting For in your Tasks.
5. Defer
The e-mails that will take you longer than two minutes to dispatch can be handled in one of three ways:
1.Store in a folder called @Action in the Folder List navigator files.
2.Right-click and drag over your Task button in the navigator and move the e-mail into your Tasks,
categorized as @Computer.
3.Write yourself a Task to handle the e-mail, categorized as @Computer, and store the e-mail in a folder
called @Action Support.
If you do the above, you'll wind up with an empty in-basket in e-mail, which is an event few people have ever
experienced!8
In summary, you need to delete a bunch, file a bunch, do your quick ones, and establish a system
for managing the e-mails that require longer-than-two-minute action and those that represent
something you are waiting on to come back from others.
8
The problem is that most people get so excited at having nothing in IN, they want to go celebrate and don’t want to look at the @Action or @Computer
reminder lists at all! You have to be adult enough, when everything is processed, to then examine all the options of your work at hand, including the e-mails you
still have to respond to that take longer than two minutes.
There are three ways you can manage the latter two important categories:
1.Create @Action and @Waiting For folders in your Inbox navigator view, and drag the e-mails into the
appropriate folder. The @ sign makes these folders stand out as different from your reference files and
sorts them at the top of the folder list, sorted together.
The advantage of this method is that it is the quickest way to organize them. The disadvantage is that it
adds an additional set of reminders of things to do to review against all your actions at hand. And the "out
of sight, out of mind" syndrome can be a killer-you must review contents of the @Action and @Waiting For
folders as often as any of your other reminders to operate within the most productive framework for your
time.
2.Right-click and drag the e-mails over into the Task lists, categorizing them in your Tasks as @Computer for
the actionable ones and @Waiting For for the others. If you do this, the Subject of the e-mail shows up as
the Subject of the task; so we recommend that you edit or preface the Subject line to reflect the action
required. If you bring over the e-mail as an attachment (a nice option), when you decide to work on it you
can launch the e-mailing function from within the attachment to the Task without having to return to the
in-box to do it.
DAVID ALLEN COMPANY Implementing David Allen & Co. Workflow Processing Using Microsoft® Outlook ©David Allen & Co. 2001 www.davidco.com
The advantage of this is that it puts all your next action reminders in one coordinated set of lists (Tasks)
instead of spread into two different functional places in Outlook. The disadvantage is the extra step it takes
to get them over there.
If you are synching to the Palm, and want the text of the email to download to the Palm, you must select
the "Copy with text" option. Pure attachments will not transfer over.
3.Store the actionable e-mails in an @Action Support folder in your emails, and your Waiting-For's in an
@Waiting For Support folder. Write the action required as a Task for you in @Computer and write the
Waiting-For item as an @Waiting For in Tasks.
The advantage is an even more integrated and cohesive action reminder system in Tasks.
The disadvantage is the extra time it might take to type in the reminder as a Subject in the Task, plus the
need to return to your in-basket area to get the original e-mail if you need it for a discussion thread or
reference.
None of these is perfect (i.e. they all require effort!), but all are much more effective than being con-
tinually plagued by the gnawing sense there are actionable things embedded in dozens if not hun-
dreds of emails lurking in IN. We have coached hundreds of professionals who have used each of
these three systems quite successfully.
About the delegating functionality built into Outlook…
Outlook has some built-in delegating and tracking capability (to hand off tasks, e-mails, etc. to others), but
we have almost never seen anyone work it effectively as a consistent operational function. There are too many
moving parts and unnecessary details embedded in the technology. Also, even if it were a working system,
there are many things outside that system you need to track as Waiting For's as well, and then you'd have
extra systems anyway (e.g. e-mails with your order number from a Web purchase, emails from your boss say-
ing to hold off on something until she got back to you). You also wouldn't think of "tasking" your boss or a
peer through the delegation system, and yet many times you are giving them something for which you would
like a response. If you have a good Waiting For tracking system anyway, there's no need for one that's extra
work and doesn't fit much of what you need to manage.
Speeding up e-mail addressing
For people you e-mail regularly, including yourself (when cc:ing yourself on delegating e-mail), it saves a lot
of time to create an e-mail Group for that single individual, and name the group a simple letter code. It is
much easier than trying to type in their name and hunting through the address book to insert it.
To create a new Group, click Tools, Address Book, New.
Uitlizing the Notes Functionality for
5 Useful Lists page 30
This refers to the Outlook Notes section, similar to the Task section-not the Notes attached to the bottom of
Tasks and Appointments.
At first glance the Notes function in Outlook is merely a simple bulletin board for miscellaneous mental Post-
it's™, and as such gets very little use from most people (a real Post-it™ is a lot more practical). However,
using it to create and manage effectively a limitless number of potentially useful (and fun) lists makes it
extremely valuable for personal organizing. The best practice here is to use Notes as an arena for collecting,
populating, and organizing an array of reference lists and checklists that can be accessed as needed.
How it works as a list manager

Notes can be categorized and viewed by
category (in Outlook 98 and later), similar
to Tasks. Then your categories in Notes will
serve as your list headings, and the Notes
will be the list items. The first line you type
in the Note will show up as the listing
under the category; all the details you can
enter on the note below the first line (up to
32k).
For instance, you could have a Category

called "Travel", and each Note could
represent a different city you frequent,
with restaurants, things to do, people to
see there, etc.
Setup
In the Notes function, set it up with View, Current View, By Category. Remove all the fields but Subject (eas-
iest is to click and drag the field title upwards until you see a black X, then release).
Once you create a note (<Ctrl-Shift> n), when you want to categorize it, either click on the small icon in the
upper left of the Note and click Categories or hit <Alt-SPACE> i. This will bring up the Master Categories list.
If the category is not there yet, click Master Category List and add it. Then click the appropriate category,
and click the X in the upper right corner or <Alt-SPACE> c to save and close it.
5. Useful Lists page 31
Some great categories and lists
This functionality is so totally open-ended and in one sense so simple, the possibilities are infinite.
Have you ever…

■ wondered whose birthdays were coming up soon?
■ had a hare-brained idea you didn't know what to do with?
■ wanted a place to capture and refer to the list of the speed keys you've been reading about in
this document?
■ wanted to remember the great restaurant you ate at in Santiago?
■ needed to remember all the things to check before you leave on a trip?
■ read something inspirational you wanted to keep and re-read every once in a while?
■ wondered where to put a suggestion about something to do the next time you visited a country?
■ needed to remember everything you need to handle when you put on a special kind of event?
■ wanted to keep track of all the articles or essays you might want to write?
■ wanted to have a list of clients and prospects to review occasionally?
■ wanted a place to keep track of the possible gifts to give special people in your life?
■ needed all the travel data for a trip in one place?
All easily managed in Outlook Notes, and particularly useful and fun when it is synchronized to a Palm
("Notes" on a PC map to "Memos" on a Palm) or other PDA, so you have access to all that information, wher-
ever and whenever.
To get started, here are some possible categories to play with:

■ Checklists
■ Clients
■ Dates
■ Focus Areas
■ Ideas???
■ Inspirations
■ Lists
■ Might buy…
■ Next time in…
■ Travel
■ Vacation Ideas
You will only be limited by your own imagination.
5. Useful Lists page 32
Cutting and pasting
One of the great advantages of your digital world of information is how easily you can grab potentially use-
ful bits of data from one place and park it in another. Using that in conjunction with Notes provides a tremen-
dous productivity boost.
For instance, you could go to our Web site, find David Allen's personal "travel checklist", select it (<Ctrl> a),
copy it (<Ctrl> c), create a new Note in Outlook (<Ctrl-Shift> n), paste it (<Ctrl> v), categorize the Note in
"Checklists", and save it. Hit your "synchronize" button, and instantly that list is available on your PDA. All in
a few seconds.
Not that you necessarily want David's checklist…! But anything like that - in e-mails, on the Web, in an inter-
nal document you see - can be instantly accessible to you ubiquitously. We'd highly recommend that you
copy our Weekly Review checklist, edit and add your own triggers, and insert it as a Note for ready reference.
Watch for the opportunities.
Tips about
6 Contacts page 33
The Contact manager in Outlook provides straightforward functionality. Though there is nothing particularly
mysterious about it, there are a couple of useful practices to be aware of.
Get control of your new inputs
If you tend to collect business cards and not immediately input the ones you want to save into your system,
dispatching the rest, they typically become an unattractive and somewhat dysfunctional pile of cardboard
that drains your energy. There are two behaviors that alleviate this problem:
1. Decide which contacts go into Outlook as soon as you pick up the note or business card from your
in-basket or read the e-mail.
Whether or not you have an assistant who can input into Outlook for you, you still have to make this
decision. Some are obviously to be entered, and some obviously to be tossed. But many people have a
problem here because they often collect contact information that sits somewhere in between. It doesn't
seem important enough to go through the drill of inputting it into the system, but it still is not irrelevant
enough to throw away. What to do?
A good solution is to utilize your reference system, and literally file that not-so-important contact
information into paper or digital folders. For instance, take all the business cards you collected at the XYZ
Conference and staple them to a piece of paper and file in an "XYZ Conference" file. In your annual purge
of your files, you can toss them all if they've become out of date, but you at least can find them easily if
you wanted to. Or just create a "Contact info - archive" file or box and park them in there.9
2. Get good at keying in new entries
Many people stack up cards because they are at least subliminally intimidated by the labor required for
entering data. If you can delegate the process, fine. But the people who always have the least problem
with their contact manager are those who can enter data rapidly and easily into the system.
<Ctrl-Shift> c creates a new Contact form, from anywhere in Outlook. The <Tab> key moves you from
field to field.
9
A good general reference filing system is critical for personal management. For details on our suggested best practices, see pp. 96-102 in Getting Things Done
or the article "General Reference Filing" in Tips, and Tools on our Web site (www.davidco.com).
6. Tips About Contacts page 34
Creative use of the Find feature
A simple yet very powerful procedure within Contacts is using <Alt> i to find key words that you can embed
in the notes attached to the people listed. For instance, if you know that a client of yours loves basketball,
put the word "basketball" in their notes. If you wind up with some good tickets to a hot basketball game,
search for "basketball" in your Contacts and instantly see the four people to whom you might consider
spreading the wealth. If you develop the habit of inserting such key words, you will have a very powerful but
informal and easy-to-use relational database kind of functionality. Find people by hobbies, interests, business
potential, or anything else you creatively decide to code in their record.
Workflow Processing
7 Miscellaneous page 35
If you are sold on only using the RIM pager…
Many are enthralled with the virtual e-mail capabilities of the Blackberry, which can be very useful. They also
don't want to carry a second PDA (like the Palm). The best way we have seen to have the Blackberry synch
to Outlook and still keep discrete categories is to apply the extra step of typing in some consistent cue to the
category as the beginning word on the Subject line of your Tasks. E.g. start all your calls with "Call…" The
Blackberry will meld all your Tasks into one huge list, but it sorts them alphabetically, so your calls will all be
together on the list. Once people catch the value of discrete categories of their actions and projects, they
often opt for continuing to manage two devices-their Blackberry for e-mail and a Palm for everything else.
Your PC must have two serial outputs to synch to both of them, however.
If you are initially setting up synchronization to the Palm
You must have third-party software to enable Outlook to synchronize to the Palm. Currently, the two most
popular are Intellisynch and Pocket Mirror. There are settings that sometimes need to be changed in the soft-
ware to ensure that your categories map back and forth from Palm and Outlook. If you have problems, check
with your local IT support, or contact tech support for the software vendor.
Workflow Processing
8 Conclusion page 36
We hope this instruction manual has been useful. We invite your comments, suggestions, and additions.
This material is intended as an adjunct to our core education of workflow mastery developed over many
years-not a substitute. Its successful utilization requires the awareness and utilization of the best-practice
knowledge work behaviors that we present in our seminars, individual coaching, and products.
For more information about the David Allen Company services and tools, contact us at:
The David Allen Company

1674 McNell Road
Ojai, CA 93023
805-646-8432
www.davidco.com
info@davidco.com
Fax-805-646-7695

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Implementing DAVID ALLEN’S

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Outlook has the ingredients for a personal management tool.................................................................................... 3

2 Setting up OUTLOOK Tasks as an Action-List Manager

Reconfigure your Task interface ............................................................................................................................. 7

3 Using the Calendar Page

How to get e-mail to empty....................................................................................................................................25

5 Utilizing the Notes Functionality for Useful Lists

6 Tips about Contacts Page

Outlook has the ingredients for a personal management tool

The principles that optimize the management of work

The need for simple lists

"Portabilizing" your lists

There are two ways to make this work:

2. Print your lists into hard copy

Get very friendly with your keyboard

Standard Windows speed key combinations

■ <Ctrl> a - Select the whole document

Outlook-specific speed keys

■ <Ctrl+Shift> n - opens new Note

■ <Ctrl+Shift> m - opens new e-mail message

■ <Ctrl+Shift> e - creates a new e-mail folder

■ <Ctrl+Shift> i - moves you to the e-mail inbox

■ <Ctrl+Shift> b - opens your address book

Other navigation speed tips

How's your typing speed?

New definitions of "Category" and "Task"

Reconfigure your Task interface

1. Clean up the TASK section

2. Change to View by Categories

3. Change the Fields in the view

You can add any of

4. Filter the View

■ Then click on the Advanced tab.

Click Complete (5th one down the list

The default Condition and Value will automatically

Then click the Add to List button.

Then OK out, and accept the

Then OK back to the View Summary dialog.

5. Sort the items automatically

6. Ensure that you can edit within the fields

7. Tweak the size of the fields in the Tasks view

The final structure

Customize your Master Categories list

These are the Categories we suggest you set up initially:

The best categories to start with

The action lists

Many times the next action on a

Some tips for your "Waiting For's":

A working example of the "@Waiting For" category is illustrated below.

Customizing your categories

Use the Task speed keys

■ <Cntl+Shift> k - opens New Task dialog (from anywhere in Outlook)

Using the Find feature in Tasks

Expanding only the categories in play

the Task setup).

1. Structure the view of this Calendar

■ View - TaskPad View - Click "All Tasks"

2. Structure the Task view

Attachments to time-specific actions

■ locations of and directions to meetings

Event-bar items: (see window at right)

1. Key events of interest happening that