usually the
specific e-mail I’m reading and responding to. And my browser

      is on the
right-hand screen. This setup gives me the ability to glance and

      see what new has come in while I’m working
on something, and to bring up a

      link that’s
related to an e-mail and look at it while the e-mail is still

      in front of
me.

            At Microsoft, e-mail is the medium of
choice, more than phone calls,

      documents,
blogs, bulletin boards, or even meetings (voicemails and faxes

      are actually
integrated into our e-mail in-boxes).

      I get about
100 e-mails a day. We apply filtering to keep it to that

      level—e-mail
comes straight to me from anyone I’ve ever corresponded with,

      anyone from
Microsoft, Intel, HP, and all the other partner companies, and

      anyone I
know. And I always see a write-up from my assistant of any other

      e-mail, from
companies that aren’t on my permission list or individuals I

      don’t know.
That way I know what people are praising us for, what they are

      complaining
about, and what they are asking.

            We’re at the point now where the challenge
isn’t how to communicate

      effectively
with e-mail, it’s ensuring that you spend your time on the

      e-mail that
matters most. I use tools like “in-box rules” and search

      folders to
mark and group messages based on their content and importance.

      I’m not big
on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and

      my online
calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the

      e-mails I’ve
flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular

      projects and
particular blogs.

            Outlook also has a little notification box
that comes up in the lower

      right
whenever a new e-mail comes in. We call it the toast. I’m very

      disciplined
about ignoring that unless I see that it’s a high-priority

      topic.

      Staying
focused is one issue; that’s the problem of information overload.

      The other
problem is information underload. Being flooded with information

      doesn’t mean
we have the right information or that we’re in touch with the

      right people.

             I
deal with this by using SharePoint, a tool that creates websites for

      collaboration
on specific projects. These sites contain plans, schedules,

      discussion
boards, and other information, and they can be created by just

      about anyone
in the company with a couple of clicks.

      Right now,
I’m getting ready for Think Week. In May, I’ll go off for a

      week and read
100 or more papers from Microsoft employees that examine

      issues
related to the company and the future of technology. I’ve been

      doing this for over 12 years. It used to be
an all-paper process in which

      I was the
only one doing the reading and commenting. Today the whole

      process is
digital and open to the entire company.

            I’m now far more efficient in picking the
right papers to read, and I can

      add
electronic comments that everyone sees in real time.

      Microsoft has
more than 50,000 people, so when I’m thinking, “Hey, what’s

      the future of
the online payment system?” or “What’s a great way to keep

      track of your
memories of your kid?” or any neat new thing, I write it

      down. Then
people can see it and say, “No, you’re wrong” or “Did you know

      about this
work being done at such-and-such a place?”

            SharePoint puts me in touch with lots of
people deep in the organization.

      It’s like
having a super-website that lets many people edit and

      discuss—far
more than the standard practice of sending e-mails with

      enclosures.
And it notifies you if anything comes up in an area you’re

      interested
in.

            Another digital tool that has had a big
effect on my productivity is

      desktop
search. It has transformed the way I access information on my PC,

      on servers,
and on the Internet. With larger hard drives and increasing

      bandwidth, I
now have gigabytes of information on my PC and servers in the

      form of
e-mails, documents, media files, contact databases, and so on.

      Instead of
having to navigate through folders to find that one document

      where I think
a piece of information might be, I simply type search terms

      into a
toolbar and all the e-mails and documents that contain that

      information
are at my fingertips. The same goes for phone numbers and

      email
addresses.

      Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I
get 90% of my news online, and

      when I go to
a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC.

      It’s fully
synchronized with my office machine so I have all the files I

      need. It also
has a note-taking piece of software called OneNote, so all

      my notes are
in digital form.

            The one low-tech piece of equipment still
in my office is my whiteboard. I

      always have
nice color pens, and it’s great for brainstorming when I’m

      with other
people, and even sometimes by myself.

            The whiteboards in some Microsoft offices
have the ability to capture an

      image and
send it up to the computer, almost like a huge Tablet PC. I

      don’t have
that right now, but probably I’ll get a digital whiteboard in

      the next
year. Today, if there’s something up there that’s brilliant, I

      just get out
my pen and my Tablet PC and recreate it.

      Days are
often filled with meetings. It’s a nice luxury to get some time

      to go write
up my thoughts or follow up on meetings during the day. But

      sometimes
that doesn’t happen. So then it’s great after the kids go to bed

      to be able to
just sit at home and go through whatever e-mail I didn’t get

      to. If the
entire week is very busy, it’s the weekend when I’ll send the

      long,
thoughtful pieces of e-mail. When people come in Monday morning,

      they’ll see
that I’ve been quite busy— they’ll have a lot of e-mail.

    

By Bill Gates