Automating Personal Productivity

Summary: By using a combination of Outlook, OneNote, Microsoft To-Do and Microsoft Power Automate, I‘m able to get to inbox zero and have a processed and prioritized task list which allows me to focus on getting things done while maintaining a solid collection proccess. Just drag emails to the right folder, process the auto-generated OneNote page and you’ll have a task list ready to complete.

Introduction

Just wanted to share my workflow which has worked very well for the last couple of years, and with the release of Microsoft To-Do and Microsoft Power Automate, this iteration finally feels solid enough to share.

The pre-requisites are that you are operating in a Microsoft 365 universe, with access to Outlook, Microsoft Power Automate, Microsoft To-Do, OneNote, all tied together with an Office 365 subscription. You can of course use the rest of the MS Office family and OneDrive, but they’re not necessary to implement the productivity scheme as outlined here.

I receive most of my tasks via email, and I found it non-sustainable to flag emails and then scroll through my inbox every day to find things I should work on.

For one it’s not very effective; I read emails multiple times to figure out the action that’s associated with each email, and second, it doesn’t allow me to focus on the items that are important. I found myself finishing a task and then going fishing for new tasks in my inbox with the result of being constantly interrupted by new email, and not really having a firm grasp of my total task list and the priority within that list.

I also get tasks in meetings, in phone calls and in interactions with my colleagues. Using my Outlook inbox as a collection place for things to do just doesn’t capture everything.

When setting out to create a process that works for me, I had a few requirements:

• This is a mobile first world, so I shouldn’t have to depend on my desktop clients for the information/task collection process, it needs to work from my phone.
• I wanted a separate task management app other than Outlook; a standalone app would allow me to focus on the tasks, and I find the task management in Outlook a bit cumbersome.
• I wanted all of my reference information in one place, I didn’t want to hunt for the relevant information related to the task in different applications.

This is what I came up with, I’ll start with the setup of each application and then go through the workflow.

System Setup

OneNote 2016: I created 6 section for the process to work, but you can expand that and use section groups if for example you want to work in projects:

1. Triage – this is where all unfiltered tasks that I need to process are stored. This is my collection inbox. Each page represents an email or a quick note with information I need to process and perhaps take action on.
2. Processed – Once I’ve processed a page in the Triage section, I drag it to the Processed section for later reference. I almost never go to this section directly, only when accessing it from the Microsoft To-Do application.
3. Work in Progress – Things I’m working on go here, for example if I need to create a presentation I use a page in this section to keep track of my work.
4. Meeting Notes – I create your meeting notes here, using the very useful feature/ribbon button ”Meeting Details” which creates a new page and auto-populates the participants in the Outlook invite and meeting details.
5. SomedayMaybe – Things I think of that I want to remember but not take action right now on goes here. No guilt if it never gets done.
6. References – When I come across some good to know information that I want to save I put it here for reference.

I also changed the quick notes section to Triage, this way a note can quickly be taken by using the keyboard combination Win+N. This is changed under ”File > Options > Save & Backup” and modify the default location for the quick note to the Triage section.

Outlook: There is actually very little to setup in Outlook, I just created 3 folders under my inbox, which corresponds to the context of the email I want to process, and an email rule:

• Action Required – If I need to take action on the emails, they go into this folder.
• Materials to Read – If I get sent for example a presentation which doesn’t require me to take any action, but I should read it, it goes here.
• Waiting for Reply – If I send an email where I expect a reply, I setup a rule that if I BCC myself, that email gets put here.

Note: The mail rule which moves email that you send with your own email address in the BCC-field needs to be setup using in ”Manage Rules & Alerts” option in the ”Move” section of the Home ribbon. Guides for this part are readily available so I won’t cover it here.

You could have a different folder structure here, for example split the ”Action Required” into a ”low effort”/”high effort” to indicate the effort required to deal with the content, but I wanted to eliminate any advanced thought of how to deal with the email, I just want to categorize it as an email I need to act on, and move on to the next.

I also configure my Outlook client to always show the BCC field so I can easily add myself if I’m expecting a reply (see workflow below for details).

Turn off all notifications for new emails, you don’t want to be a slave under your inbox, I only check it a few times per day, the rest of the time I should be working on completing my tasks.

Finally, I favorite my 3 new folders so they show up in the favorite section in Outlook for easy dragging and dropping. This also works in the mobile Outlook client; when you swipe right to move the email, they show up at the top.

Microsoft Power Automate: This is a key part of the solution, as it is the glue that ties all the different parts together. I’ve created 3 rules, which are basically variations of the same rule:

• Rule 1 – If an email arrives in the ”Action Required” folder, create a page in the ”Triage” section of OneNote, with the subject as the title + the hashtag #ActionRequired, and put the header + body of the email in the page, mark the email as read and place it in the Archive folder.

A screenshot of the rule is shown in the picture below, and a variation of the rule can be found here, including the HTML body of the OneNote page.

• Rule 2 – If an email arrives in the ”Materials to Read” folder, create a page in the ”Triage” section of OneNote, with the subject as the title + the hashtag #MaterialsToRead, and put the header + body of the email in the page, mark the email as read and place it in the Archive folder.
• Rule 3 – If an email arrives in the ”Waiting for Reply” folder, create a page in the ”Triage” section of OneNote, with the subject as the title + the hashtag #WaitingForReply, and put the header + body of the email in the page, mark the email as read and place it in the Archive folder.

In my experience the flows are run every minute.

Workflow

Now let’s piece it all together! My typical day looks like this:

Collection:
I get to the office and start going through my email using 3 rules:

1. If I don’t need to act on the email I either delete it (it was irrelevant for me) or archive it (hit backspace when the email is selected).
2. If I need to respond, and the email can be replied to in under 2 minutes, I just do it immediately. If I expect a reply I add myself in the BCC field which sends a blind copy to myself, and which the email rule setup in Outlook then will put in the “Waiting for Reply” folder automatically. Once I’ve responded I hit the backspace key to archive the email.
3. If I need to act on the email, and I don’t have time to respond in under 2 minutes, I put it in one of my 2 favorite folders depending on the context (“Action Required” or “Materials to Read”).

By using folders, you can easily replicate this flow on you Outlook client on your phone, just setup the right swipe to move it to a folder, and the left swipe to archive it. Now you can get to a zero inbox on the move!

• I do this until I have no more emails in my inbox, which even with a large number of emails takes only a few minutes to do. My inbox is now empty!
• I may have chatted with a colleague or had a call, and made some notes. This automatically gets stored as a page in the OneNote Triage section.
• Maybe I remember I need to do something and quickly add the task in Microsoft ToDo, this can be done either on the phone or the laptop.

Once the email triage is done you have an empty inbox!

With Microsoft Power Automate, your emails have been moved to the OneNote triage section where they have generated a new page with the correct context (#ActionRequired, #MaterialsToRead, #WaitingForReply), and the emails are also archived automatically using the Power Automate script so you can find them all in the archive folder if/when you need to get back to them. Time to move on to the clarify & process part of the workflow.

Clarify & Process:
Once my emails have been taken care of, I turn to the OneNote Triage section. Here I have pages which have already been pre-processed, meaning I know that each page is something I need to act on.

Each page can be an email, or a note I’ve taken. If it’s an email it also has a hashtag which allows me to quickly identify the context (#ActionRequired, #MaterialsToRead or #WaitingForReply).

The key here is that an email subject doesn’t always (or rarely) identify which action is required to process the email. After reading the page, I change the title to a task description, for example ”Respond to Peter with pricing regarding customer Y” if it’s something I need to do myself (#ActionRequired), or ”Remember that Peter needs to call me regarding customer Y” if the context is #WaitingForReply.

Once the title has been changed to a task description, I make it a task by clicking ctrl+shift+1 for a task that has a due date today, ctrl+shift+2 for a task that has a due date tomorrow, ctrl+shift+4 for a task that has a due date next week, or make a custom task by using the task button in the OneNote home ribbon. I now know roughly when I need to focus on this task, so I’ve started the prioritization process.

Finally, once a page has been made into a task, I drag it into the Processed section. I do this for every page in the Triage section until the Triage section is empty.

Every task that is turned into a task is immediately synced to Outlook tasks, but also to Microsoft To-Do. The nice thing about creating tasks in OneNote is that a link back to the OneNote page is included in the Microsoft To-Do task.

EXTRA: I also create tasks in the ”Meeting Notes” section. If a meeting where I’m taking notes results in an action, I put the cursor anywhere in that text describing the action and again do ctrl+shift+1, ctrl+shift+2 etc to generate a task. The task is now in my Micrsoft To-Do app with a link back to the OneNote page if I need more information regarding the meeting that generated the task.

Prioritize and Do:
We have now successfully captured and processed all the tasks in our inbox and through our other collection methods. All of our tasks are listed in the Microsoft To-Do app.

Now it’s time to go through the tasks, and for overdue tasks set a new realistic due date, I typically set ”tomorrow” for tasks I know I’m not going to be able to do today, but I want to review again tomorrow. For tasks that you want to focus on today, you add them to the ”My Day” view by clicking ”add to my day” in the task sidebar.

What you end up with is a prioritized task list in the ”My Day” list, uncluttered by everything else you need to do, but the with the confidence that all tasks are properly captured.

BONUS: Since you added hashtags in the Microsoft Power Automate script, you can click on a hashtag in Microsoft To-Do to search for all tasks with that hashtag, which is useful if you want to list for example all tasks where you’re waiting for a reply, and you want to do a quick review.

Reflect:
The Outlook inbox should be processed a few times per day in my opinion, depending on your inflow of emails, I try to do it 3–4 times per day, but you shouldn’t continuously check the inbox. You may get responses which allows you to check off a task, and new emails that need a higher priority and added to your day, but if it’s really urgent they’ll call or text.

By going through the inbox and the OneNote Triage page a few times per day, you can generate a gross task list which you can then prioritize and then select a few which you think you’ll be able to do that day. You are now in control of the tasks you need to do, and you can set your own agenda for the things you want to focus on.

Tips & Tricks

When an email gets sent to OneNote, and then to the Microsoft To-Do app, it contains a link back to the OneNote page, even if you move the page from Triage to Processed. In a setup where I have 2 screens, I like to have the To-Do app on one side of the screen, and OneNote on the other side, and use the second screen to do the actual work.

I typically click on a task in To-Do, which shows me the link to the OneNote page in the task sidebar. Clicking the link opens the OneNote page where I can read the details of the task, which typically is the body of the email that generated the task.

To actually respond to the email, I select the subject of the email from the OneNote page, and search for it in the archived folder in Outlook, where all emails are stored. This may sound cumbersome, but really isn’t. Since you can search for the exact subject, you get a direct hit every time, compared to when you search for an email from a person that may have sent tens or hundreds of emails in the past, regarding different topics.

Also, with the ability to focus on a specific task, you are no longer hunting randomly through your inbox for things to do, you become very deliberate in your actions, so searching for a specific subject actually feels oddly precise.