As a result of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, many of us are fortunate enough to be able to work from home for an extended amount of time. This flexibility has enabled us to remain productive, take care of our family and/or ourselves, as we participate in social distancing to “flatten the curve.”
As great as this workaround (working from home) is, this change poses new challenges to the previously established workflow we’ve come accustomed to. My office workflow – the way I manage my workload and ‘tasks’ varies from paper daily planners, electronic calendars, and tons of MS Outlook emailing. I found myself working way longer than usual, and accomplishing just as much as I did before. This means I was getting worse (less effective).
Time Management
As I researched ways to make this new work-environment more effective, I found an excellent article by Jason Chatfield titled “Work from a calendar, not a To-Do list.”
The article provides time-management skills such as organizing your repetitive tasks, blocking off time for specific types of work, and much more.
However, counter to the article’s title, I found much value in working from both a to-do list and my inbox. I have a running to-do list, categorized/split up by task type. For example, day-to-day time sensitive tasks go under one block (technical report reviews, investigations of loss, peer reviews, etc.). Workload-related issues (workload reassignment, data-calls, metrics, strategic planning), and personnel stuff (time cards, promotions, appraisals, processing human capital initiatives, etc.) goes on other blocks.
I then schedule-off certain hours/minutes on my daily/weekly planner to complete the tasks in order of the often ever-changing priority.
Having a somewhat structured “plan” consisting of to-do lists and outlook (tasks, desk calendar, flags) which can be modified/altered/updated helps ME stay on track as best I can.
Outlook Web Access power-user tips
If you’re like me and rely on Outlook Web Access (OWA) as you work remotely, De Anza College has published an excellent guide titled Webmail Tips and Tricks for Outlook Web Application (OWA).
The guide shares tips/suggestions for utilizing outlook web access effectively. Some of my favorite tips are:
- How to modify the Conversation View to easily find your emails by topic
- Creating New Folders to keep track of, document and locate outstanding items
- Creating inbox Rules (i.e. to send certain recurring subjects/keywords to a separate folder like timecards, training requests, etc.)
- Organizing Tasks that need to be followed up, and more
Want to become a traditional MS Outlook Power User? check out this slide deck available on LinkedIn Learning – complete with easy to follow videos.
What are some of your tips, tricks and suggestions as you work from home during the pandemic?