Dump your stress this Easter

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I just can't stop telling you about OneNote. It's like we've found our first love again since 2007 beta 1.
It's a public holiday here in the UK today and Monday so here's my Easter stress remedy for time-compressed hours in 4-day weeks..

At the beginning or end of the day (or both) try this:

  • open a OneNote page
  • force yourself to sit there for 15 minutes while you dump everything in your mental todo list onto the page
    • keep going
    • don't stop and don't worry about duplicates
    • don't let yourself get distracted into doing some of them
    • 5 minutes to go
    • OK finished? well done - everything is on the page, you can exhale now
  • Drag text around and start grouping them on the page
    • tip: hold down the Alt key as you drag and drop to join sections up on the page
  • Now your worry list is organised into groups
  • turn each line into an action if appropriate, flag it for follow up (I just click the button for today every time)
  • switch to Outlook (all your tasks will be synched there) and in the to-do bar make sure you've not got any duplicates
  • set the correct follow up time (today, tomorrow, next week etc) for each one
  • switch to calendar week view and drag items off the to-do bar onto the calendar to block out sufficient time to do each task
  • now you can relax knowing its all in hand and you can go off and have a nice weekend/evening

Try it - I bet you will be less stressed out if you do..

Another top tip - in a meeting, click the "notes about this item" from calendar and add all your notes and flag actions as you go along. At the end of a meeting where you've whiteboarded some stuff, take a photo with your smartphone and later paste it onto the page. You can share it with others easily too either via email or shared notebooks. And with OneNote mobile this will get even easier.

Happy Easter everyone!