Every morning, right before I let her out, Bamboo plants her paws in front of my feet and casually leans into a perfect and seemingly effortless Downward-facing Dog asana, this simplest of yoga poses.

And every morning I admire—or is it envy?—her unencumbered life, her absence of guile, her lack of…multiple email accounts, calendars, and devices. It’s possible that through this desire for simplicity that I finally figured out I don't have to juggle several different kinds of software on several difference devices to manage my own busy, laden, and not guileless life.

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Let's take a look at your morning. Chances are it takes you a while to wake up. You may need a shower, a shave, some coffee, breakfast, and maybe a chat with your loved one. Then—and only then—will you feel steady enough to wrestle with that onerous inbox of yours. I am very much this way: The last thing I want to do first thing is jump right into email. It's tempting, I know. How beautiful those bolded folders are with their brilliant blue unread mail counts, just itching to take over your brain, your time, and your life.

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Before I hop into today's features that you MUST use, I need to first explain what Conversations are (in Outlook, not in life; I assume we are all up to speed on the back and forth that happens between people...and their pets). Conversations in Outlook are simply email threads — the complete chain of messages from the first message through all the responses. In Outlook 2010 you can view all your messages in any folder in Conversation view (on the View tab, in the Conversations group, select...

There's nothing worse finding your home mailbox filled with trash: useless coupons, real estate ads for houses you'll never be able to afford (cruel marketers!), sweepstakes entries, direct mail nonsense, and catalogs for you, your clothes, your hobbies, your wife (her clothes, her hobbies), your kids (ditto), and even your pets.

But wait; there IS something worse: Junk mail in your inbox, clogging it with promises of weight loss, virility, cases of champagne, and miracle cream to erase your fine lines and bad memories.

Making friends with your Outlook Junk Mail filter is like employing your very own beefy bouncer who’ll never let the uncool people beyond the front door.

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There are three different ways in which you can share your Outlook 2010 calendar:

• By email, where your calendars can arrive in your recipient's inbox as an attachment, and with a "Calendar Snapshot" in the body of the message,
• With Exchange Server, where you and others using Exchange and can share calendars and manage permissions, too.
• By sharing your online, Outlook Hotmail Connector-synchronized calendar with whomever you want.

It just depends on what sort of calendar you're sharing and with whom you want to share it.

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Question: How many mouse clicks and keyboard finger tappings does it take to categorize an email message, move it to a folder, add a follow-up flag, reply to it, and create a meeting request about it?

Answer: One, if you're using a Quick Step.

Quick Steps, new in Outlook 2010, is a feature that applies multiple actions at once to an email message. I like to think of Quick Steps as rules that I apply when I want to (rather than setting something up in Rules that is usually applied automatically). Frankly, I like the control the Quick Steps allow me because I'm looking at each mail that comes in and, with one click, I can have it take any number of actions. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

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Shortcuts are generally good: When training to do heart surgery? Not good. When developing software that helps people be more productive? Not good. When using software more efficiently? Good. These last two are obviously related: When the developers of Outlook created the program, they did not take shortcuts so that you , as the user of aforementioned software, could. And Outlook has a bevy of really great, really easy to remember keyboard shortcuts that you should know if you want to speed up your...

Today's post isn't a long list of tips from which you can pick and choose and wander your way through—no. Today I'm presenting you with three power tips. Tips so sturdy, so reliable, and so easy to remember that I sort of feel bad that I haven't offered them up until now.

But I must confess: These tips came from a variety of places—I didn't just come up with them like magic—and so a couple of them are new to me, too.

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In this final video installment, Harry has really learned some effective time and schedule management, and he knows that all that depends on consistently applying the principles he's learned-—fundamentals that can happen naturally after they become part of a normal routine.

But Renée has one more fun little tip for Harry before she's off on her new job.

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Although you don't have much say about when and how many meetings are scheduled, you do have more control over your calendar than you might think.

In this video, Renée talks to Harry about some of the things he can do to take more control over his calendar such as 1) Setting aside time each morning to review his calendar and task list; 2) Blocking out appointments for completing the work he plans to do; and 3) Schedule more time for himself to do a thorough review about what's planned for the current week and beyond and how to prioritize those things

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