Are you using Office 2007 with new, potentially befuddling, ribbon interface?  Do you find yourself yearning to know where esoteric commands are now?

It used to be the case that you would have to read the help (ugh), or even head online to an interactive guide (such as this one for Word) that essentially translated the 2003 menu to 2007.

But fret no more!  I’ve just now been informed (hat tip to Marc over at the EN forum) that there’s actually a search powertoy that will let you type in what command you’re looking for, and then find everything that matches.  Kind of like using Launchy, or even Vista’s new start menu.

It’s called the Search Commands powertoy, and you can get it directly from Microsoft Office Labs.  It is experimental, unsupported and works for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, 2007 versions only.

If you can’t remember, or don’t know yet, how to get to certain commands in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint 2007, give the Search Commands powertoy a shot.  I find this an almost-timely addition to my stable.  “Almost” because just two days ago I wasted about 15 minutes trying to figure out how to insert a section break (at the next page) in Word 2007.  Now, I can just do this:

Ahhhhh, progress.

A few months ago, I posted about resisting your trusted system, and admitted that I had come full circle back to using Outlook for all of my GTD needs.

You may be surprised, but I’m still using it.  It’s most definitely my trusted system.  All of my important next actions go there; my hard landscape, repeating tasks that I need to accomplish, etc. 

In this post, I just want to highlight a few things that I like, nay love, about using Outlook 2007 for my main GTD stuff.

Quick Entry

Unlike my first go-round with Outlook, this time, I’m not using any macros.  In fact, I don’t even tend to create many appointments or tasks in Outlook itself.  Instead, I use Outlook to browse, navigate, manipulate my appointments and tasks.  To enter the information in the first place, I take advantage of the fact that there are command line flags that can be used to create Outlook elements. 

Now, it *used to be* that you could use a command like

“c:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12″outlook.exe /c ipm.task

To create a new, blank, task.  Alas, when I tested this tonight, it was broken.  It seems that a recent SP update for 2007 might have broken this.  I’m not going to try and track down a fix, since I don’t use this approach anyway.

Instead of pure command line, I started off with a VBS script I found online.  The beauty of this approach is that you can either double-click on the vbs file to open a new appointment, or use a keyboard shortcut, or my personal favourite, call it from SlickRun and pass it some arguments.

I’ve since modified the script slightly to allow for passing in the category that I want assigned to the new task.

Similarly, you can create tasks using a VBS script.  I have a pair of scripts, one Perl and one VBS that I call from SlickRun.  It allows me to type in:

@@ Call Travel agent re Vegas @calls d:25 Apr 08

and get a new task, categorized with @calls, and with a due date of this coming Friday.  The point of the Perl script is to allow me to use whatever date format I feel like at the time, instead of forcing me to always use the 2008-04-25 format.

Formatting

One of the major things I love about Outlook is that you can format to your heart’s content.  There is even automatic formatting.  We’re probably all used to the concept that in Outlook, bold means you haven’t read it yet, and red means it’s important or overdue.  But you can do so much more with the automatic formatting.  For example, when I create a new all-day appointment that starts with “( )”, as in “( ) Pick up dry cleaning”, Outlook can colour that appointment red.  Then, when I complete that tasks and put an “x” in the brackets, Outlook removes the colouring.

Similarly, I can customize my view(s) so that different contexts are shown in different colours.  I have other rules based on dates: if the due date is within 7 days, the task is shown in blue.  If it’s due today, it’s bold and blue.  If the task cannot be started yet, I tend to hide it in most views, but if it’s a view that shows non-startable tasks, they’re shown in grey italics.  Etc. etc.

Another formatting trick that I’ve recently discovered (thanks to Productivity Cafe), is to take advantage of the free/tentative/busy attribute of an appointment.  To do this, right-click on an appointment, go to the “show time as…” item in the context menu.  I use this with all-day tasks in the month view, but other combinations are possible.  If an appointment is “free”, any colouring you have assigned to its category is confined to the task itself.  If an appointment is “tentative”, the day it’s on is shown in striped colour.  If it’s “busy”, the whole day gets blocked with colour.  See the example below - is that not the coolest thing?

Week View

The thing that sold me on Outlook 2007 was the week view; this allows you to see a week in your calendar, plus, any tasks that are due on a particular day are shown under that day - talk about making your  hard landscape easier!  And, you can see another list of all (or some) of your tasks in a side panel.

Here is a view of my current week:

Some points about the view:

• green in the calendar is a birthday or anniversary
• blue is for hard appointments
• purple is for the gym
• I also colour code my contexts: blue for @home/@housework, green for @errands, yellow for @online+/@laptop+, grey for @online-/@laptop-, etc.
• as you can see, I haven’t done my weekly review yet - it was due last Friday; heh.

Other

Basically, Outlook gives me the opportunity to use quick entry (the quickest I’ve ever had, regardless of the system I’ve tried.)  The advantage here is that since the VBS script accesses Outlook programmatically, you can create a new task and set various fields, such as “category”, “start date”, “priority”, etc.  I’ve not tried another tool that gives me that much control.

In addition, Outlook is just plain pretty to look at.  It pleases me to see my calendar laid out in it.  It pleases me to see my next actions, organized by context, or by due date.  It most definitely pleases me to be able to recognize instantly those next actions that I should be focusing on.

Outlook is a great way of coordinating my appointments and next actions with my Palm.  It’s not perfect, e.g., the automatic formatting doesn’t translate to the Palm.  Plus, I can’t avoid seeing non-startable tasks on the palm.  However, it still gives me the opportunity to see what’s coming up, without having to do major contortions to get the data into the Palm in the first place.

Finally, Outlook offers a good API for developers to get their hooks into, so to speak.  I’ve found a set of command-line tools that can allow you to query, and even modify your Outlook tasks.  They were created by Dale Lane, and I use a couple of them to show my overdue and high-priority tasks on my desktop with Samurize:

As you can see, I’m awful at housework.  But that’s not because I don’t know about the chores! ;)

A few days ago, I resurfaced after a long absence.  I mentioned in that post that I have actually changed my GTD system (not once, but twice) since I decided that I liked GTD Tracks for my online GTD application.

I can hear you all from here….”What?!?  You spent so much time evaluating applications before finally settling on one and then you quit it already?!?”.  Yup, I can hear you.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but I just can’t seem to settle down.  I’m not convinced that this is actually a procrastination habit for me.  Granted, I’ve spent much time dicking around with this system or that system, or even figuring how to make an oldy-but-goody like Lotus Agenda work as a GTD system.  So, yes, maybe procrastination figures into it.  But I don’t think it’s the major reason.

Friction

I tend to switch GTD applications when they start irritating me.  I originally moved away from Outlook because I found it bloated and it didn’t do projects very well.  Since then I’ve forgotten how many systems I’ve tried.  Some I do remember.  I loved my text based system, but moved away from that when I got tired of the ugly text-only interface.  I really enjoyed Lotus Agenda, but found the keyboard-only interface restricting after a while (although they really knew how to do pattern recognition from what you typed in).  I tried Vitalist, but got tired of too much information in the main screen.  I gave FusionDesk a good workout, but found that doing a review was just too hard, and there was little activity from the developer.  Finally, I gave GTD Tracks a good go, but finally got annoyed at having my data online.  I was about to head off on a bunch of trips, where Internet access was not going to be guaranteed, so I wanted to keep my next actions with me.  Plus, I have to admit, the latency of a web-based application just about killed me.  I hate waiting; drives me crazy.

I understand intuitively that when I get bored/irritated/annoyed, I start looking elsewhere.  But I never really thought about it.  Until I was listening to a podcast interview with Kelly Forrister (Yes the Kelly Forrister from the David Allen Company).  It’s a podcast interview done by The Sassy Ladies.  It was a good interview, but something Kelly said made a lightbulb go in my head.

She was talking about her own system, and how she occasionally experiences resistance, or friction, with her system.  This is when your trusted system causes you some anxiety, and you start avoiding it.  Obviously, this is the kiss of death when it comes to actually Getting Things Done.  In Kelly’s case, when she starts feeling this resistance, she goes through her system and tightens things up, maybe rewords some next actions, etc.

When I heard this, I thought two things:

1. Wow.  Resistance!  That’s what I’ve got.  I resist using my GTD system because there’s something about it that’s not satisfying me.  That’s why I keep changing it.
2. Darn.  I wish Kelly talked more about her own personal system; I’d like to know if she made major modifications to the process itself, or if it was just a case of “cleaning” the data, so to speak.

Reducing Friction

There have been several topical posts crossing my feed reader lately that can help you tighten up your trusted system and hopefully reduce the resistance you’re feeling:

• Eight Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Goal Setting.  After reading this post, re-examine each and every one of your next actions.  Are they specific enough?  Are you using your Someday/Maybe list appropriately? Are you trying to accomplish too much?
• A Roadmap to Spectacular GTD Failure.  A rather tongue-in-cheek post, suggesting the very best ways of screwing up with GTD.  Some unhealthy behaviours you might be currently exhibiting: pushing the weekly review to a more convenient time, defining open-ended projects, turning your email inbox into your “trusted system”.
• 10 Ways to a Slim and Trim To-Do List: Part 1 and Part 2.  This pair of posts has great ideas for making your to-do list lean and mean, regardless of whether you GTD or not.  Great tips include: do quick and easy tasks *now* instead of writing them down, examine stale tasks, put reminders into your hard landscape instead of your to-do list, and make sure your next actions are *really* next actions.

My Plan

A couple of years ago, I moved away from Outlook for several reasons.  I was kind of bored, even the macros weren’t enough to stimulate me.  I didn’t like having my calendar and my next action list on two separate pages, I was eventually going to have to leave Outlook one day when I got a job, and it didn’t handle projects.  Mostly, it was just me getting itchy feet, so I started on a multi-year odyssey to find the perfect tool.

And where am I now?  Well, back at Outlook actually.  After trying other things and still not being 100% satisfied, and after seeing the new Outlook 2007 interface (oooh, pretty), I decided to just bite the bullet and come back.  First of all, I get uber-easy synchronization with my Palm, which was always a sticking point with other systems.  Printing is nice, dragging things around with the mouse is nice, the new calendar view that shows your hard landscape, and a chosen selection of next actions, is nice. 

I’d like to report that Outlook and I are doing fine right now.  It’s only be a few weeks, but we’re getting along quite nicely.  I forgot how much I liked having everything synced to my Palm!  Wow.  I’ve also been doing a little bit of scripting (no macros this time around - I don’t think I really need them), but a nicer script for entering new next actions (and appointments) from SlickRun.  I’ve even learned a couple of things that make my calendar into a truly wonderful hard landscape.  Of course, more on these topics at a later date.

So, I’ve gone back to an older, but well-trusted, system for my next actions.  I’m currently feeling no resistance.  The next time I start to feel friction with my system, I’m going to explore that feeling - am I itching because I’m bored?  because I’m procrastinating?  because there’s something about the system that doesn’t satisfy me?  or because I need to tighten things up?

Are you tired yet of hearing about the Seinfeldian chain? No? Excellent!

If you don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, you can read about Seinfeld’s productivity secret at LifeHacker.

The whole premise is that if you want to motivate yourself to do something, get yourself a big calendar, and mark a big red X on it every day that you accomplish that goal. The idea is to keep marking X’s, and to not break the chain. “Don’t break the chain”, says Seinfeld.

It’s a wonderfully simple idea, and thus has become quite popular in the blogosphere. It seems that every time I turn around, there’s another post in my feed reader about Seinfeld’s chain, or the Seinfeldian Chain, if you will.

Now, there’s even a cute online application that provides said big calendar, complete with red X functionality. The folks over at SmarterFitter allow you to create a web page for your very own chain.

But what if you don’t want to have a web page devoted to each and every chain that you might want to monitor for yourself. What if you want to see several goals at once? What if you just hate online apps? What if you have a secret, or not so secret, spreadsheet fetish?

Well, have I got a deal for you.

Inspired by the SmarterFitter web page, along with David Seah’s recent Excel Gantt Chart spreadsheet, I decided to make myself an Excel spreadsheet to hold multiple Seinfeldian Chains. Its layout is very much based on the old Lotus Organizer Planner view, which was great for seeing an entire year at once, with colour-coded blocks to show when you were on vacation, working on various projects, etc. (Man, I loved that software many years ago!)

Here’s what my spreadsheet looks like:

Note that I’m using Excel 2007, which means that I can make use of the diagonal lines inside a cell in order to make my X’s. If I recall correctly, the diagonals are new to 2007, but I could be wrong. However, even if you don’t have access to these diagonal lines, you can still make use of the spreadsheet. Instead of marking an X, just colour in the cell.

The reason I like working with Excel is that it’s so very versatile, especially where boxes and lines are concerned. All I did was:

• lay out the remaining months of 2007, one per row
• offset the first day of each month so that it starts on the right day
• use dark grey to shade in weekend days
• use light grey to shade in unusable cells
• insert the date numbers into each cell; using a smaller font, in a grey colour, makes it look like a real calendar
• play with the column width and row height so that each cell was approximately square
• separate all days of the month with thin lines
• outline the whole month’s days in a bolder line
• set the background colour for a big portion of my worksheet to white, so that I don’t see the grid lines

I’ve got one worksheet for 2007, plus another that just holds a blank version of the calendar. Now, when I want to add a goal to track, I just copy it from the “Blank” worksheet, and paste it under my other goals. This way, I can track as many goals as I like, all in one place.

You don’t even need to have a spreadsheet program - you can simply upload the xls file to your Google Docs (or any other online document application that handles spreadsheets) and make use of it there. That way, you can take all of your Seinfeldian Chains with you. Here’s what the spreadsheet looks like in my Google Docs:

I did have to recolour the weekends, since both the “unused” grey, and the “weekend” grey came out the same. Plus, I’ve turned the afore-mentioned diagonal line X’s into coloured cells. It’s actually easier to fill in a cell this way, than it is to add two new lines to it.

Downloads

I’m including both the xls and xlsx versions of the spreadsheet. The former will work with Excel 97-2003, as well as any other application that supports xls, e.g., Google Docs. The latter works with Excel 2007.

So, if you want your very own Seinfeldian Chain to customize as you see fit, download one of the files above and start playing with it!

I’d like to draw your attention to the fancy ad on the right side of my blog. Just over there —>. (Okay, those of you who are just reading the RSS feed, you’ll have to actually navigate to the blog to see the very fancy animated ad.)

Anyway, I just wanted to draw your attention to the CompanionLink trial that is currently being offered. The advertisement is about to run out, and before it does, I wanted to let you know that I’m using CompanionLink to sync my Google calendar with my Palm Zire 72, and it is *nice*.

You may remember that I tried out CompanionLink a few months ago, but didn’t have any joy. Even after a second attempt, I still couldn’t get it to work.

Well, this time, I had the undivided attention of one of their tech gurus (thanks Andy!). Between my sending in error logs, and their excellent support, we were able to get my system to work. And do you know what the problem was?

It turns out that I use a custom date format. Have for years. All of my hand-rolled backup batch files are tied to it. The custom format showed, for instance, “Tue 03 Jul 07″. For whatever reason, the combination of this custom format, combined with Google Calendar and a synchronization app (such as CompanionLink and probably gSyncIt and SyncMyCal as well) caused a major melt-down. The easy solution? Change my custom date format to a standard one.

Okay, it wasn’t a perfectly easy transition. Since I’ve been using my palm for years, and have alternated between using Outlook and the Palm Desktop as my conduit, I had a bit more trouble. It turned out that I had some strange recurring appointments that I couldn’t see at all, even when I tried using the Palm Desktop again. They weren’t even visible on the Palm. But CompanionLink would sync them to the Google Calendar, which would then proceed to throw a hissy fit. I ended up reinstalling the Palm Desktop, using a blank calendar to overwrite my Palm a couple of times, dancing around dressed in paint and waving a chicken bone. And then, things worked perfectly.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the best thing about CompanionLink was the customer service. And I’m a big proponent of good customer service.

The next best thing? It lets me sync to either Outlook (and then to Palm), or to the Palm Desktop, or to the Palm itself. It also offers support to other applications, such as Lotus Notes (which I hope to use one day), Windows Mobile, and even the Blackberry.

If you’re using Google Calendar, and want to hook it into your other calendar apps or hardware, check out CompanionLink.