We all know we should be more efficient at work. We should try harder, stay motivated and get the job done as best we can. That's what our managers want anyway, right? Well, what if I told you that it isn't just in the best interest of the company or your boss that you are efficient but in your own interest as well?

Of course, being efficient means that you will work harder, get more things done and be overall a better worker in the eyes of the company but it will also free up your time by completing all tasks assigned, let you feel less stress with an increased workload and best of all allow you to bump up your pay grade as you prove to your superiors that your the best of the best.

So let's get started with some tips on Using Outlook to help organize yourself and become more efficient!

In Outlook there are many ways of creating a folder structure to help with organizing incoming emails. But how many people actually use these folders in a practical and helpful manner? If your like many, you have many hundreds, if not thousands of emails in your inbox. How do you find what you need when you need it? How do you even know what's important? Sure you can search but a better approach would be to organize your mess.

Step 1: Identify recurring themes in your emails
Step 2: Create high level folders for each of those themes
Step 3: Break down themes into sub-themes and so forth

Before you know it you will have a structure file system in which you can easily place and identify topics which you need to be made available on demand. Being organized in your emails will increase your efficiency by allowing your brain to relax by knowing it doesn't need to remember where everything is since Outlook is neat and organized thereby allowing your brain more power for any task at hand.

Often times you will find an email chain with a subject which is completely irrelevant to the topic of the email. We've all had this happen, been too lazy to change the subject or create a new email so we just reply to our mailing list and discuss a new topic.

Unfortunately this is confusing to not only your own organizational needs but to others as well. If they cannot quickly identify what your email is about they will likely not read it and slow your job down as well as their own. Always remember to change subjects and make sure that not only the content of your email is clear and concise but also the title identifying it.

Our third tip is to keep your Inbox Empty. The inbox is used for new emails coming in that require your attention, not as a giant folder to hold all emails you ever receive. Your task will be greatly simplified by using the Inbox as just an inbox from which you give attention to new topics and then move them OUT of your inbox to a folder you setup in Tip #1.

The inbox is an excellent benchmark of how many open tasks you need to attend too. Try to leave the office with an Empty Inbox and you can rest assured that you've completed all your tasks for the day and that, until tomorrow, you can forget about work. That's the piece of mind you can gain by keeping your Inbox Empty and your folders organized.

When you send an email you will want to organize it as well in your folder structure from Tip #1 so that you can have a complete picture of how the conversation went (especially if you had the last word). This allows you to return to topics from where you left off rather than where your counterparty left off.

In Outlook you can turn on a rule to copy all sent emails to your Inbox. Or you can following the Youtube video on the right here for how to set Replies to copy to the same folder you reply from.

We are all guilty of this little problem, sending an email to someone and then discarding the topic until they get back to us. What happens when they don't? Three weeks go by and no one has continued the topic and before you know it your clients are asking questions you haven't the answer too.

The solution to this is to drag the email you have duplicated from sending into the Tasks Icon on Outlook. Here you will have another window popup and you can set a time to be reminded to follow up on the topic. Set this and forget it until the topic pops up again. Then you can check if the person you were waiting on has responded or if she or he ignored it and act accordingly.

So now I encourage you to go out and try to perform the tips above and see how your productivity improves. How much more efficient you'll feel and how much more time you have for other tasks, or even to go home on-time for once?! Let me know how it went and leave a comment!

Also, please don't answer the second poll until you've had a chance to implement and get a feel for the above tips. Let's try to see how helpful these have been.