The email efficiency tricks you’re missing

By Jessica Salerno-Shumaker, OSCPA senior content manager  

When it comes to managing email, Randy Dean says people are making one common mistake.  

“People are far too reactive,” he said. “They're responding immediately to that meeting request on their calendar and emails coming in, and they're not getting in front of their own workflow.”  

 
Dean will present “Outlook Efficiencies and Productivity” on Nov. 15 at the Ohio Accounting Show where he will cover Outlook tools, strategies to customize the Outlook experience and building a more efficient process.   

He said that many professionals spend 25-50% of their day in their email, but most likely have never gotten formal training on the best way to use it. And because email is so common, companies rarely take the time to train their people on how to be more efficient in the program.  

Dean said to better manage your day, focus on using the five main functions of Microsoft Outlook together strategically: email, calendar, contacts, tasks, and notes. Understanding the full capabilities of each function can allow you to choose what works best for you.  

Generally, his audiences are more comfortable with email, Dean said, than tasks or notes. But exposing people to everything each program can do is important.  

“A lot of people just don't realize what's under the hood,” Dean said.  

One of the more popular techniques he shares is the ability to take information from an email and quickly turn it into a calendar contact or task. It’s a trick that saves time, and he says people are surprised they didn’t know about it earlier.  

Dean said he also understands that all the capabilities of the program might not make sense for every person, such as using the Microsoft Outlook task list when they’d rather write a to-do list on a physical piece of paper.  

“I want to show people how they can get significantly more strategic, and hopefully a bit less distracted, in terms of how they're using their Outlook programs,” Dean said. “This way you can use these programs more efficiently and productively.”  

Register today for the Nov. 15-16 Accounting Show!