BlogOffice

Recurring Tasks

category : office XP and office 2003 : Outlook

I am still enamored with using Tasks to streamline and organize my work load. I am trying to be more intentional about the freelance articles I write—-but doing so means writing up descriptions of the various ideas I have and doing the research I need to find the right publisher for them. It's a lot of information gathering.

To help me track and organize my ideas, I created something I call the Writing Palette—it’s a Word document that is a collection of ideas I just jot down as they occur to me. Then I go through the Palette and match the ideas up with publishers, write the query letters, and send them off. But getting the ideas out there requires vigilance on my part—-the kind of follow-through that sometimes falls through the cracks when I’m working toward a deadline on a book project.

So to help me stay up on this process, I created a recurring task to remind me to update (or at least review) my Writing Palette. I clicked Tasks in the Outlook window and then chose New and created a new task as usual. Then I clicked the Recurrence button in the center of the task window and chose what I wanted for the Task Recurrence: Daily, Every Weekday, No End Date. I entered the day I wanted the recurrence to start and clicked OK. Now every day a task is added, automatically reminding me to review and update the Writing Palette. A simple and effective example of person-PC partnership. :)