[This entry is the second in my series covering Windows Live products and services]

If you want family and friends to be able to stay in touch with you easily, then you should blog.  A blog is a place on the Internet where you can write once about what is happening to you and then anyone can read it.  A blog can help family and friends to stay in touch with you more easily because:

• The very moment that you write something on your blog, everyone can read it.  Family and friends don’t have to wait until they are actually talking to you in order to find out what is happening in your life.
• You only need to write about what is happening to you a single time.  After that, an unlimited number of people can read what you have written without it taking any more of your time.  In the end, you can communicate your life to more people in less time.
• It has a nice side effect for you, the blogger.  As you continue to write stories about what is happening in your life, you build up a small journal / life history of yourself online.  Other people can read it, sure, but you can also go back and read or print old blog entries to remember what you were doing in the past.

The best tool for publishing stories to your blog is Windows Live Writer.  Writer is a program for your computer for composing and publishing blog entries.  It supports all major blogging sites, so wherever your blog is located online you can use Writer to compose your blog entries.  If you don’t have a blog, Writer will help you create a blog on Windows Live Spaces, the site where I keep my blogs.

To get started with Windows Live Writer , download and run the installer from http://get.live.com/WL/config_all.  After you enter the login information, you can start to compose and publish blog entries.  Because Writer has your login information, you don’t actually need to take the time to log in to your blogging site every time that you want to post a blog entry.

You can get started with a new blog entry by clicking the "New" button.  Type the text that you want to share.  When you're done, click the "Publish" button.  Presto!  Your blog entry is on the Internet.  You took the time to write it down once, and now it's at a place where all of the people you care about can read it.

Download Windows Live Writer now and start publishing blog entries about what is happening in your life.  Give your family and friends the web address (URL) of your blog so that they know where to go online to see what’s happening with you.  I’ve taken my own advice and set up a blog for my family where we publish news that is happening with us.  It’s been a great way for parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins to stay in touch with us no matter how far away they are.  With Windows Live Writer, publishing has been a snap and has made blogging easy and fun.

Since I’ve started work at Microsoft things have been busy.   Multitasking is the most effective method that I’ve found to get more into my day.  Multitasking needs to be approached carefully, though, because doing two things at once can degrade the quality of work.  I’ve experimented with a lot of different ways of multitasking, and here’s what I’ve found that works:

Jogging to Work

I live just 1.6 miles from work, so jogging is feasible.  I’m a pretty fast runner, so it takes me under 15 minutes to make the trip, even with stopping for traffic lights.  I’m lucky enough to have a set of locker rooms at my building, so all told it’s just 30 minutes from my front door to sitting down at my desk at work.  That’s totally reasonable when you consider that the figure includes time to shower and dress (which I would be doing anyway :-)).

If I didn’t jog to work, I’d have to exercise a few times a week on my own.  Even if I just went jogging 3 times a week I figure that it would take at least 2 hours out of my week.  When I jog to work that exercise time is rolled right up into my commute time, and I save that whole 2 hours per week.

Side Note on Exercise

This isn’t really the main purpose of this blog post, but let me put in a plug here for taking time to exercise.  You can walk/jog/bike without a gym membership, and you can leave right from the front door of your own home.  If you build up to the recommended 3 outings per week, it will take just 2 hours out of your week.  It’s 2 extra hours, true, but the effect on the other 166 hours is INCREDIBLE!  Your mind and body will be sharper and more alert, and you may even find that due to your increased health your body needs less rest – in this way you may get your 2 hours back and then some!  In any event, the mental, emotional, physical, and not to mention financial benefits of exercise far outweigh the cost of time spent on it.

Reading while Commuting

The value here depends on how well you learn by reading, but for me reading and learning go right together.  The trouble is that most of the time there’s something better or more urgent to do than to read.  I’ve found time to read while I commute.  I take the city bus home in the afternoons, and I read a work-related book while I’m waiting for / riding the bus.  I can get in a few pages a day and over a hundred pages in a month.  All told, I read several books a year this way.  Many times I’ve been able to apply something that I’ve read into my job at work.

Reading E-mail while Working

E-mail can be a big time-waster, so don’t let it take you down.  I’ve organized my schedule to the point where I don't have to budget any specific time just for e-mail.  I do read and respond to all of my e-mail every day, however.  What I do is look for the "10-second" breaks in my day - small moments during the normal course of the day where I have 5-20 seconds of free time.  For me these moments occur while I'm waiting for a web page to load or while I'm waiting for a project to compile.  Rather than just leaning back in my chair and doing nothing I flip over to my e-mail and read whatever e-mail I've received.  Usually it's not very brain-intensive, so it's easy for me to make the mental switch to and from reading e-mail without too much difficulty.  This method has allowed me to get through all of my e-mail nearly everyday by using time that was already existent in my schedule.

Read a few more of my thoughts about e-mail at work.

Eating While Working

You could take time of your day specifically to eat, or you could eat while you're working at your desk.  Look for those "10-second" breaks during your day and take those opportunities to take a bite of food.  You just need to get the bite in your mouth, and then you can chew and swallow while you're continuing to work.  If you can save a half hour per day in this way, then you will save two-and-a-half hours per week.  That's extra time to be done with work and spend time with your family or to do whatever else you'd like to be doing.

Summary

I've done all of these things, and these tips really do work and save me time.  Thanks to smart working habits like these, I feel that I'm able to succeed at work and at home with my family at the same time.  If you'd like to get more out of yourself and out of your days, then try these tips.  Let me know how they work for you, and please share any other tips that you've found that help you to save time out of your day!

E-mail is easy to send, so you can get a lot of it.  Especially at work, you may be subscribed to 10s of mailing lists.  I've seen some people that have no filtering rules for all of the e-mail that they receive.  This organization method is awful and can keep you from acting on e-mail that is important since it is mixed up among so many e-mails that are not important.  If you're using Outlook, then you probably also get distracting pop-ups for every little, unimportant message.

I've seen others that set up a different folder for each mailing list and set up rules to place messages sent to the various mailing lists in the different folders.  This method is better, because only the more relevant messages stay in your inbox.  I tried this method for several months but found a few deficiencies:

• As you create more and more rules for more and more mailing lists, you can have a lot of folders to click through in order to read messages.
• There is still unimportant mail that ends up in your inbox (and Outlook pop-ups).  For example, if you are subscribed to a rarely-used distribution list, then that mail is probably not very important.  However, you probably don't have an Outlook rule set up for it, either, so the first message sent there will end up in your inbox.  Other, fairly-common situations can lead to unimportant mail ending up in your inbox.

After experimenting with the second method for a while, I've come up with my current method of e-mail organization, which I like quite a bit.  Here's the philosophy behind my e-mail sorting rules:

1. E-mail should be organized into folders by its level of importance
2. By default, e-mail is not important.
3. E-mail with my address in the to: or cc: line is important.
4. E-mail marked as high importance is important.

That's it, those are all of the rules that I have for e-mail sorting.  I have only three folders, each representing a level of importance.  My folder are "Inbox", "All", and "Deleted Items" representing items to read immediately, items to read when I have time, and items I will not read, respectively.  By default my incoming mail goes in the "All" folder, unless my name is in the to: or cc: line or if the message is marked as high importance.  I also have a few rules set up to delete messages that I get all the time but that I know I will never use.

This method does a fantastic job of organizing my e-mail in a simple way that empowers me to act and respond to the incoming information in a manner that is timely given the content of the message.  When I get an Outlook pop-up during the day, I know that it is a message that I should open and respond to immediately.

If you haven't contentiously developed an e-mail sorting plan, then I recommend that you start with this one.  You can customize rules 3 and 4 as you like (maybe e-mail from your boss important, for example).  You can add rules for items that should be automatically deleted.  You'll find that this method allows you to act on important items immediately while getting the unimportant things out of your way so that you can work!

Life is busy, no doubt about it.  For some reason I thought that my life would get a bit calmer now that I’m out of college.  Calmer, yes, but really it’s no less busy.  Even though it’s the summertime, I still get up every weekday before the sun rises. 

Not that I’m complaining.  I used to really have a bad attitude towards a full schedule.  It frustrated me that there wasn’t enough time for me to get everything done that I wanted to do.  Now that I’ve lived a bit longer, I realize that it actually can be a good thing that I run out of time.  I see two main benefits to not having enough time for everything:

1. Running out of time makes you decide what is important in your life.

   If you had enough time to do everything under the sun that interested you, then you would never have to make the tough choices of what to cut out of your life.  Although it’s not pleasant at the time, this decision-making process can be a wonderful chance to reflect on the deep values of your life and ensure that you are living in harmony with those values.  You can learn to say ‘no’ to the less important activities that can clutter up your life in order that you can ‘say’ yes to the more important activities.  While it’s initially a difficult experience, there is long-term satisfaction and peace in knowing that you are in close enough touch with your values to cut out the less important things of your life when time runs short.

2. Running out of time pushes you to be more effective.

   If you always had time for everything, then there would be no drive to improve your methods.  In my own family, time is a scarce resource, and there is never enough for everything.  I’m continually amazed by the creativity that we exhibit as we find better and better way to do things.  That motivation wouldn’t be there if we already had time for everything that we wanted to do.

So things are busy, yes, and I love (most) every minute of it!