As a meeting organizer, I quite often experience that people are not aware of these useful features and strange quirks. This blog post can hopefully help you to use Outlook in a more efficient way. My experience and cases below are based on the Windows version of Outlook.

O N E 



When you tick off "all day" on a calendar event, the "show as" field automatically turns itself into "free".

Ex. You want to add a "day off" into the calendar, but when someone tries to invite you to a meeting and for instance uses "the scheduling assistant", you appear as availble.





T W O 

If you haven't heard about the scheduling assistant mentioned above, it is a tool which helps you find an available meeting slot for all your participants. 



T H R E E 

Somehow, everyone (aka default Outlook settings) thinks that 60 minutes is a perfect meeting duration. Also, some people think it is possible to get from one meeting to another without any breaks between the meetings. You can change the settings in Outlook to shorten appointments automatically. Go to File > Options > Calendar > Calendar options.





F O U R

Did you know that if you don't choose "send response now" when you answer a meeting invitation, the meeting organizer won't get any update if you're planning to come to the meeting or not. 



I use the tracking overview quite often in order to find the responses from people. 



F I V E 

Not everyone are aware that someone else can see their calendar. You can decide yourself how much you share with other people. My personal preference is that you share title and location as a default (just make sure to mark personal events as private). In general, your work calendar should not be secret. 

Pro-tip: You can share more detailed calendar information with specific people.



I hope you had a couple of new learning outcomes from the tips above. Good luck with testing them in your daily life. 

Five things you perhaps didn't know about Outlook

Arbeidsdagen har en tendens til å starte rolig for så å fylles av ting som skal følges opp. Denne luken ser på hvordan jeg bruker notatboken min og hvilken litteratur jeg har tatt inspirasjon fra.

Dette er notatboken min. Den husker de tingene jeg glemmer. Den husker prioriteringene jeg kommer frem til. Den husker hva jeg har gjort. Jeg bruker den flittig.



Jeg avslutter uken mine med å finne frem til neste doble blanke side. For selv om uka nesten er ferdig, er det mye jeg ikke har fått gjort. Og det er nettopp dette notatboka er flink til å huske for meg.



Jeg starter med å fortelle notatboken at neste uke er det uke 50.



Så forteller jeg den at det også neste uke er 5 arbeidsdager. Den siste ruta får den bruke som den vil. Det varierer fra uke til uke.



Så forteller jeg notatboka hva det er jeg ikke er ferdig med og må gjøre neste uke.


Og hva jeg skal på mandag, og eventuelt andre ting jeg vet jeg må gjøre på bestemte dager eller tidspunkt.

Med hodet tømt, kan jeg gå hjem til helg uten å være redd for å glemme noe. Notatboken min vet alt som skal skje og minner meg på det på mandag.



Mens jeg har fri, jobber notatboken min flittig. Den ønsker å fortsette å utvikle seg.

Den leste Getting things done.

Der lærte den om det å lage seg en prosess for å ta imot oppgaver på en måte som lar en følge de opp. Den lærte om å gjøre de oppgavene en kan gjøre på kort tid, 2 min eller mindre, med en gang, da det fort tar mer tid å lage en oppgave på det enn å gjøre det. Den lærte også om å bruke kalendere og andre verktøy for å organisere bestemte typer oppgaver.

Sist, og kanskje viktigst, den lærte at en bør skrive opp hva det neste steget en skal gjøre i en oppgave er. Det lar en komme raskt igang med en oppgave når en plukker den opp.



Den har studert Eisenhower prioriteringsmatrisen. For selv om Getting Things Done sa mye smart, var det lett å miste oversikten over hva som var viktig. Det hjelper ikke å være produktiv hvis en gjør feil ting.

Den lærte om også om andre metoder for å prioritere, som “The Action Priority Matrix”, som ser noe om forholdet mellom innsats og effekt for ulike tiltak.




For å lære mer om lister har den lest boka Every tool is a hammer av Adam Savage

Der snakker Adam om hvordan å tømme hode ut på papir, om å lage lister, om hvordan lage lister med lister, hvordan markere progresjon, hvordan dele opp oppgaver, og om hvordan bygge momentum. Den inspirerer også til å skape og utrykke deg.





Den har også studert Bullet Journaling. Der lærte den om å bruke forskjellige typer bullets for å formidle forskjellig behov. Den lærte også om å lage prosjektsider med notater og en index for å lettere å kunne finne frem til møtereferater og planer. Den syntes at det er spennende at en notatbok og en metodikk for å ta notater kan bli til en bevegelse som normaliserer nevromangfold og deler nyttige verktøy.





Når mandagen kommer, og en ny uke starter husker notatboka mi hvor vi sluttet uken som var. Den bruker det den lærte mens jeg var borte til å gjøre jobben min enklere. 

Jeg vet rett og slett ikke hva jeg skulle gjort uten. 








Notatboken min

Say you want to open a project in VS Code, or in IntelliJ IDEA, or maybe you want to navigate to one of several projects in Google Cloud.

If you are currently spending more than five seconds to find what you are looking for, this blog post is for you.

If you are using a Mac and you are not using Alfred, you are missing out. Alfred is a Spotlight replacement on steroids, and the free version gives you an incredible tool for searching your files or the web.

To whet your appetite, here are some useful commands:

Type "find x" to start searching for a file and then press enter, and your file will be revealed in Finder. Handy!

Type "open x" to search for any file or folder and open it in a relevant program. Spotlight can't do this!

Type "define x" to find the meaning of a word. No longer will you be ignorant of the meaning of "octothorpe", "petrichor" or "sillage"!

However, the real fun starts with the Alfred Powerpack. I promise I'm not sponsored by Alfred, it is just that good!

With the Powerpack you can make your own workflows, but more importantly you can partake in a plethora of pre-made plugins from the Alfred community. Today I will share some of my favorite workflows with you, dear reader.

Open any GitHub Repo

Find and navigate to public and private repos by entering "gh" and a search term. This one saves me a lot of time!

Check out https://github.com/gharlan/alfred-github-workflow for info on how to install it. Requires a tiny bit of fiddling (and installing PHP), but it's definitely worth it for the time it saves!

Open a project in Visual Studio Code

VS Code is perhaps the tool I use most during a working day, often jumping between folders and projects. With "code ..." I can find and open a folder as quickly as possible.

There are several workflows to choose from; I use the one from https://github.com/alexchantastic/alfred-open-with-vscode-workflow, but feel free to try any other and find one that works for you.

Open a project in IntelliJ IDEA (or any other Jetbrains IDE)

Quite similar to the VS Code one, this workflow lets you jump straight into a matching IntelliJ project using "idea ...". Can also be used with any other JetBrains IDE like PyCharm or Rider. Grab it at https://github.com/bchatard/alfred-jetbrains and start saving time today!

Open a specific service in a Google Cloud Project 

This one is probably my favorite for the amount of time it has saved me. For anyone working with GCP, I imagine your workflow to be something like this:

Open console.cloud.google.com in a browser

Navigate or search to find your project

Click or search to find your service

Unfortunately, each one of these steps have quite a delay to wait for things to load.

Now, with https://github.com/jarlefosen/alfred-gcloud-shortcuts, you only have to type "g", and it will automatically remember your most recent GCP projects and services, and let you search them. Saves me 15 seconds every time, which does add up.

I hope these Alfred tips and workflows will give you a flying start, and if you don't find a workflow you are looking for, why don't you start making your own?

Everyday hacks

Five things you perhaps didn't know about Outlook

Notatboken min

Let Alfred accelerate your actions!

Sign up for our newsletter

Join in the holiday cheer and count down to Christmas with us!