Create a “Action Needed” Label

The second best thing I ever did for email (the first, coincidentally is switching to Gmail) was to create a label telling reminding me that I need to do something for that email. Even something as simple as needing to read the email in detail later can save you when you are plowing through 20+ emails in 30 seconds. Quickly labeling something with “Action Needed” allows you to keep your inbox empty but still remember that the email still needs your attention.

Create a “Waiting for Reply” Label

This is the hardest step of the process, but it will save you time and time again. When you send off an email and are explicitly waiting for a reply be sure to label it with “Waiting for Reply”. While this process will help you get YOUR email in order, many other people out there will forget to reply to you (don’t worry, your “Action Needed” flag will prevent you from doing the same!). This label is a great tool to help remind you of who you are waiting on, and whether you should nudge them to reply back to you. Also, don’t forget to remove the “Waiting for Reply” label when the person actually replies to you!

Use “Multiple Inboxes”

Multiple inboxes is a Google labs feature that helps you put multiple inoboxes on your Gmail home page. Why would you want multiple inboxes you ask? Simple, with this system you can create an “Inbox” for your labels! That way on your Gmail home screen you have your regular inbox, an inbox with emails labeled “Action Needed” and finally an inbox for emails labeled “Waiting for Reply”. This way you can archive the email from your regular inbox, but still see prominently on your Gmail home screen emails requiring some action or ones you are waiting for a reply to.

To enable multiple inboxes go to Settings ->Labs and enable Multiple Inboxes. You now should have a “Multiple Inboxes” tab in your settings. There just set Pane 0 to “label: Action Needed” and Pane 1 to “label: Waiting For Reply”. Now you have your GTD labels on your Gmail homepage as special inboxes!

Use “Move To” to keep things right

When someone sends you an email that requires you to eventually do something, use the Gmail “Move To” button to quickly move that email to the “Action Needed” label. The Move To button in Gmail allows you to quickly move emails from one label to another.

And there you go! Some simple rules and procedures to help keep your email in order. If you have a different system (or one similar) let me know in the comments!

The Wall of Laptops

The wall of laptops is simply when EVERYONE at a meeting has a laptop sitting in front of them. This can do several things to your meeting:

1. Allow Distractions – The wall of laptops allows the meeting attendees to disconnect from the meeting by either doing work, IMing, or even surfing the web.
2. Discouraging Participation – Not only do larger laptops create a physical barrier to participation they also create an emotional one as well. The classic signs of participation (leaning in to show interest, hand and arm movement) are all cut off from the rest of the participants.

Break Down These Walls

There are a couple easy ways to break down the wall of laptops:

1. Ban Laptops at Your Meeting – If you are the organizer of the meeting let it be known that laptops are not allowed at the meeting unless you are presenting to the meeting group and need a computer or are going to be taking meeting notes (and hold whoever volunteers to this promise!).
2. Encourage the Use of Netbooks – Netbooks are the new class of super small laptops that are cheap and underpowered. They are perfect for this situation because of their small profile and underpowered components. These laptops are designed for light-weight applications and therefore are PERFECT for taking notes. Their small form factor also allows encourages participation because they don’t have a large screen to hide behind and when an attendee is actually doing something on their netbook it will be obvious to all the participants.

Hopefully these tips can help bothy our meeting schedulers AND attendees get more out of their meetings, because we all know meetings are expensive in more way than one and the better we can make them the better off EVERYONE is.