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By Melissa MacBeth

 Note   This article is part of a series from Melissa MacBeth's Best Practices for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007.

See links to the rest of the articles in this sequence

• Weekly review

• Where to do your work

• Bulk process

• Finish your tasks

• Work offline

Weekly review

Looking at the whole picture of your time and your tasks will help you to prioritize important work over less urgent tasks. It will help you to make it clear to others what can (and cannot) be realistically expected of you to accomplish. Reviewing your past week and upcoming week is also a useful way to help you prepare for tasks such as a weekly meeting with your manager or writing a status e-mail message.

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Where to do your work

After you process your e-mail, the best place to do work within Outlook (reply to e-mail, and so on) is in Tasks. By switching to Tasks, your view isn't distracted by messages arriving in your Inbox.

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Bulk process

As you go through your task list and your calendar, do similar tasks together. For example, if you only have a few minutes, make all of your phone calls (if you only have a few). Tackle energy-intensive tasks (for some, that might be responding to e-mail) when you have more energy, and deal with your low-energy tasks (for example, reading status e-mail messages) later in the day or whenever you have lower energy. By "bulk processing," you will make progress on all of your projects at once.

One way to bulk process is to change the arrangement from arranged by Start Date to arranged by Category. To do this, click the Arranged By header and then click Categories.

 Note   If you have tasks that are blocking other people from getting their work done, do those tasks first.

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Finish your tasks

As you finish your tasks, mark them complete. Outlook 2007 keeps the list of your completed tasks automatically, which can be a useful summary of what you've accomplished. If you don't need to keep a record of the task or the e-mail, delete.

Work offline

If you have a lot of work to do, consider going offline to stem the tide of incoming e-mail distractions.

 Note   You can only continue to work in Outlook 2007 if you are using Outlook 2007 in Cached Exchange Mode (Cached Exchange Mode: A copy of your Exchange Server account mailbox is saved on your computer in an offline Outlook Data File (.ost). This copy provides quick access to data, including when you work offline, and is synchronized with the mail server.), or working offline using an online mode account.

About the author

Melissa MacBeth is a Program Manager in the Outlook product group. She worked on several time management features for Outlook 2007, including the To-Do Bar, flags, flagging on send, and the Daily Task List.

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