NEW YORK (FORTUNE) -It's pretty incredible to look back 30 years to when Microsoft (Research) was starting and realize how work has been transformed. We're finally getting close to what I call the digital workstyle.
If you look at this office, there isn't much paper in it. On my desk Ihave three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can dragitems from one screen to the next. Once you have that large displayarea, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact onproductivity.
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The screen on the left has my list of e-mails. On the center screen isusually the specific e-mail I'm reading and responding to. And mybrowser is on the right-hand screen. This setup gives me the ability toglance and see what new has come in while I'm working on something, andto bring up a link that's related to an e-mail and look at it while thee-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 andfaxes are actually integrated into our e-mail in-boxes).
I get about 100 e-mails a day. We apply filtering to keep it to thatlevel—e-mail comes straight to me from anyone I've ever correspondedwith, anyone from Microsoft, Intel, HP, and all the other partnercompanies, and anyone I know. And I always see a write-up from myassistant of any other e-mail, from companies that aren't on mypermission list or individuals I don't know. That way I know whatpeople are praising us for, what they are complaining about, and whatthey are asking.
We're at the point now where the challenge isn't how to communicateeffectively with e-mail, it's ensuring that you spend your time on thee-mail that matters most. I use tools like "in-box rules" and searchfolders to mark and group messages based on their content andimportance.
I'm not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop foldersand my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus onthe e-mails I've flagged and check the folders that are monitoringparticular projects and particular blogs.
Outlook also has a little notification box that comes up in the lowerright whenever a new e-mail comes in. We call it the toast. I'm verydisciplined about ignoring that unless I see that it's a high-prioritytopic.
Staying focused is one issue; that's the problem of informationoverload. The other problem is information underload. Being floodedwith information doesn't mean we have the right information or thatwe're in touch with the right people.
I deal with this by using SharePoint, a tool that creates websites forcollaboration on specific projects. These sites contain plans,schedules, discussion boards, and other information, and they can becreated 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 aweek and read 100 or more papers from Microsoft employees that examineissues related to the company and the future of technology. I've beendoing this for over 12 years. It used to be an all-paper process inwhich I was the only one doing the reading and commenting. Today thewhole process is digital and open to the entire company.
I'm now far more efficient in picking the right papers to read, and Ican 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 wayto keep track of your memories of your kid?" or any neat new thing, Iwrite 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 theorganization. It's like having a super-website that lets many peopleedit and discuss—far more than the standard practice of sending e-mailswith enclosures. And it notifies you if anything comes up in an areayou're interested in.
Another digital tool that has had a big effect on my productivity isdesktop search. It has transformed the way I access information on myPC, on servers, and on the Internet. With larger hard drives andincreasing bandwidth, I now have gigabytes of information on my PC andservers in the form of e-mails, documents, media files, contactdatabases, and so on.
Instead of having to navigate through folders to find that one documentwhere I think a piece of information might be, I simply type searchterms into a toolbar and all the e-mails and documents that containthat information are at my fingertips. The same goes for phone numbersand 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 myTablet PC. It's fully synchronized with my office machine so I have allthe files I need. It also has a note-taking piece of software calledOneNote, so all my notes are in digital form.
The one low-tech piece of equipment still in my office is mywhiteboard. I always have nice color pens, and it's great forbrainstorming when I'm with other people, and even sometimes by myself.
The whiteboards in some Microsoft offices have the ability to capturean 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 whiteboardin the next year. Today, if there's something up there that'sbrilliant, 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 sometime to go write up my thoughts or follow up on meetings during theday. But sometimes that doesn't happen. So then it's great after thekids go to bed to be able to just sit at home and go through whatevere-mail I didn't get to. If the entire week is very busy, it's theweekend when I'll send the long, thoughtful pieces of e-mail. Whenpeople come in Monday morning, they'll see that I've been quite busy—they'll have a lot of e-mail.
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