I guess I'm stuck in the past, but the Office Ribbon still hasn't grown on me. I think it makes discovering stuff harder rather than easier, more than once I've been stuck on trying to find the word count menu button (if it's so smart, shouldn't it know I was looking for that?). I ran across this Search feature in a Visual Studio Magazine editorial, and can't help but smile/smirk/wonder at the need to have an add-in to help people find commands. Probably not entirely fair, the menu options for any Office product are fairly rich, but does this seem like a good UI feature to need?

While I'm pondering the features of Office 2007, anyone have any idea why they don't have an out of office feature for those not on Exchange? Maybe it's there and I can't find it, but seems like a more configurable option would server everyone well; enter date out/back in the office, reply once to any give email with those dates and be done with it.

I think everyone struggles with keeping track of things they need to do, and it's all too easy to get overwhelmed and/or lose track. Lot's of time management books out there that help to a degree, but to possibly over simplify them it comes down to having a system. Today I thought I'd share what I'm using today and how it works for me.

I use Outlook 2007 and it's really the only part of Office 2007 that had a change I appreciated, the Todo Bar. The majority of my conversations and todo items spawn during email, perhaps 20% via calls or meetings.

So, my system:

1. If its a meeting or a has a firm delivery date, I add it to my calendar. I want to get who/where/when captured and I include the other attendees on the request. This is mainly because I sync to my Blackberry and having the basics on my phone has saved me more than once.
2. Anything I won't do today or tomorrow, or that someone else will do, goes on my todo list. I just type in the name of the task being as verbose as possible and leave it assigned to no category. Get it written down and move on quickly.
3. Anything I want to today gets written down on my paper pad (I prefer something about 5x8 spiral bound, but no leather case or anything as it just adds to the bulk I already carry). As I finish things I get to have the minor thrill of crossing something off my list as I go.
4. A couple times a week I go through my uncategorized todos and assign them to categories (I have about 8, ones for our businesses, delegated tasks, personal tasks, etc). More than 6-10 just too hard to figure out which category is correct. If I decide I them by a given date I flag that at the same time and don't worry about moving to the calendar.
5. Each morning I take a quick look at my todo list and grab out the things I want to do that day, but I don't mark them as done - I'll catch that the next day or two when it really is done - in case I lose the damned paper pad and lose track!

The electronic/paper system works for me, feels like the best of both worlds and good enough. More importantly, simple enough. The only place that requires discipline is checking the list every day to see not only what I need to do for that day, but what I need to have done in advance to be ready (though you could argue I should have better dates for those!).

The key for me is getting it written down somewhere, so I don't have to struggle to keep those things all in my head all the time. Some of the items will get done, some will just sit there as work for a rainy day, some of the items will lose importance due other change and get deleted, and some...well, they just sit there hoping for a rainy month and lots of enthusiasm.

All comes back to patterns. Just like medical interns, the key is to so ingrain the pattern that even tired/stressed you can maintain your routine - it's a safety net that has kept me out of trouble more than once. 

Friday I gave another iteration of our free Sucessful Technical Speaking class, upgraded some since the last version, and this was my first time using the Presenter View in 2007. If you haven't seen it yet here is a page about it from MS, but basically it makes it very easy to show the audience the slides while you see a smaller version of the current slide, your notes in an expanded pane, and an easy to navigate list of slide images below that. Only time I had a problem with it was when I wanted to switch from Powerpoint to something else, had to work to get that view up on the right monitor - but that might be me learning how it works still. As far as presenting it's entirely usable and for the first time makes it easy to use notes embedded in the deck.

Here's a list of New Stuff in Powerpoint 2007 you might find interesting as well.

I've put this off for a while, but I needed a break from the routine and I'm starting to get a few things sent to me in the newer formats so maybe there is some level of adoption. After fighting through some install issues because I had the 2007 to 2003 converters installed it's running finally. I've seen the previews and know about the ribbons, but in practice it IS different and at this early place frustrating - I used to know where everything was located! I'm sure that will change soon enough, and then maybe I can see if really does increase my productivity (I'm skeptical, but we'll see). More practically speaking each version does add some nice options. For instance, I see that Outlook now has a dialog that controls whether programmatic access is allowed and the new todo bar looks interesting, it's definitely a step in the right direction. I've made a note to revisit in a couple months to see if there was any 'killer feature' or productivy enhancing piece. Note that neither of those is necessarily required to validate the value of the upgrade, but it would be nice.