Overcoming Overload?

Posted by Marbux
Mar 12, 2015 at 01:21 PM

Some questions that might affect the recommendation:

1. Is this a temporary problem or is it expected to continue, even get worse?

2. Is there a budget for solving the problem?

3. Is assigning an assistant (human) feasible?

4. What operating system(s) are you using?

If it is expected to be a long-term problem, then redesigning office workflow is probably the optimal solution, which may call for company system-wide redesign and new role-based project management software that can automatically convert incoming emails to tasks. I.e., you may be doing what has become the work of two staffers and your role could be split in two. On the other hand, if the problem is expected to be temporary, then temporary assistance and delegation of tasks might be in order. Simply having someone to answer the telephone and to filter and convert emails into tasks by project can work wonders in freeing up time with further personal productivity obtained as the assistant gains experience with your work and can assist on specific tasks.

>> Work is not going to let me install any software on my machine, so I would need a web-based or portable, no-install app. Ideally, this program would have folders, tags, and automatically place a date and time to any note.

If you are using Windows, you might take a look at NoteCase Pro. The Win32 version can be installed portably (and has more features than the Win64 version because some libraries have not yet been ported to Win64). It is also multi-platform, with builds available for Windows, OS X, Linux/Unix, and several mobile devices. Nodes are automatically date/time stamped for creation date and last modification date. It’s an outliner and features node tagging. The feature that most distinguishes Notecase Pro from other outliners is that it features an in-memory flat List View of nodes, a non-persistent sortable flat list view of any arbitrary group of nodes. List view can be filled using Search, double-clicking on a tag, several other user actions, or scripts. Once in List View, the arbitrary group of nodes can be sorted by columns, including the date/time stamp columns, task properties (e.g., due dates, expiry date, status, priority), tags, custom node properties, etc.

All of those properties can be searched using the NoteCase Pro Find dialog, which enables highly granular searches with text, regular expression, and boolean queries and a wide variety of search limiters (e.g., full document, branch, children, descendants, listed nodes, marked nodes tasks, node clones, titles and content, tags, titles only, content only, custom property/value, “Done” nodes, nodes with attachments, and date ranges, such as precise date, before, after, for date created, date modified, date task started, date task due, date task expiry, and date task completed.

NoteCase Pro is highly extensible with Lua v. 5.3. I’ve written about 80 List and NoteGroup scripts, with about 40 scripts each classified as Choose NodeGroup to List and Process Listed Nodes, all in a hierarchical menu structure (along with about 120 other scripts). Those discussed are in my Cornucopia Scripts collection, all embedded in a single NoteCase Pro document. I put all of my scripts in the public domain and I’m happy to share.

There is a free plugin available that implements a complete Getting Things Done system (other free plugins too).

Changing a node to a task is as simple as double-clicking on a node title and hitting the Task button. To convert back to a normal node, hit the Delete button on the Task Properties Dialog.

There may be other apps that are better for your problem. But this is the program I know backward and forward that appears to meet at least most of your criteria. http://notecasepro.com/