Posts Tagged ‘GTD’
GTD Tasks in Outlook
As I have posted before I am always looking to streamline my to-do lists. I think I have come up with the ultimate solution (at least for me). Anything I use must sync with Outlook. We use MS Exchange here at work. People send me tasks through Outlook and I receive Outlook tasks from our MS Project server so I cannot get away from Outlook. A great deal of my tasks come from emails I receive so again Outlook is central to creating tasks.
I try to follow a lot of the GTD methodologies. Since a fair amount of tasks are based on emails I was looking for a way to streamline that process. I created macros that help me classify emails on my to-do list. I actually created 3 macros (Next actions, Waiting, & Someday).
These macros do the following:
1, Takes the items that is selected and creates a task
2. Attaches the selected item to the task
3. Sets the task’s category
4. Sets a reminder for certain tasks
Here are the instructions for creating the macros. (The directions are slightly different for Outlook 2007)
1. Start Outlook
2. Tools | Macros | Security
3. Choose “Medium”, which will prompt you on whether or not you want to run macros (VBA). You may need to restart Outlook at this point in order for that setting to take effect, I’m not sure.
4. Tools | Macros | Visual Basic Editor
5. Doubleclick on This Outlook Session on the left, which will open the code window on the right
6. In the code window, paste the code from the attached file (it is attached to this post)
7. View | Immediate to make the immediate window show up
Next I added these macros to my standard toolbar.
1. View | Toolbars | Customize
2. On the Commands tab, click Macros on the left-hand side
3. Drag the appropriate macro to the standard toolbar (say, next to the “Send/Receive“ button).
4. Right click on the button and change the Name field if you want to shorten the text or assign a different accelerator key or an image
5. Click Close
Now when I get an email (or any other Outlook item) I can click one of these new buttons and create a task with the item attached.
