April 5th, 2006 in Lifehack, Management, Productivity

Productivity tips from Bill Gates – How He Works

At Fortune, Bill Gates talks about his workflow and his organization system. On top of his marketing stuff on his products, he talks about couple of key things that involves in his daily work life. Here are some key points:

Paperless.
Email is the first communication medium
Uses email filtering to drop down the number of incoming emails to an acceptable level.
Email as the central universe of his workflow.
No to-do list. Uses email, folders and online calendar.
Uses email notification icon, but discipline of ignoring it.
Uses desktop search for files, other than navigating through folders.
Uses whiteboard to brainstorm.

Interesting in term of how he works. Any praises or bashes on Bill Gates’ work style?

How I Work: Bill Gates – [CNNMoney.com]

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Leon Ho

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David Zinger says on April 6th, 2006 at 1:21 am
Sounds like Bill is an email email email kind of worker. I guess he is doing okay with his business so why not.
Michael A. Vickers says on April 6th, 2006 at 2:28 am
I find it interesting that he uses desktop search to find his files instead of that file/folder paradigm he lifted from Apple/Xerox.
Otherwise, I’ve sort of migrated to the same way of doing things, except I don’t have enough e-mail (yet) to really have to filter things down. I also try to use a to-do list — I am not the boss, so I can’t just work by reacting to what hits my inbox.
alfonz says on April 6th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Desktop search? E-mail filtering? Sounds like he’s using a Mac.
WTL says on April 6th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
Maybe he *is* using a Mac and has a switchbox to flip over to a Windows box when people can see what he is doing. ;-)
Jbanks says on April 6th, 2006 at 11:22 pm
I wonder what Desktop search he’s using? He can’t possibly be using the Windows seach can he? It’s so sloooow. Any guesses?
Michael A. Vickers says on April 6th, 2006 at 11:46 pm
He’s using Google desktop while he keeps his inbox tidy using Gmail.
Ricky Spears says on April 9th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
In a recent picture I saw it appears that he uses a Motion Computing LE1600 Tablet PC — the same thing I use on my day job. Of course, he’s probably running Vista and Office 2007 too. I’m not. :o)
Marcus Solorio says on April 20th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
I work very similarly. I keeping “re-dedicating” myself to working paperlessly (tools like OneNote help)
Email filters: Absolutely…my latest favorite is Search Folders in Outlook 2003.
Elimination of the “to do” list: I find that daily/short-medium range items can be handled using this style. (I love flagging email for following up and tracking stuff).
Desktop search: Have tried many, but am I currently pushing myself to leverage technologies like Sharepoint. It contains its own engine, which works fine.
The almighty whiteboard: it is a staple of collaboration. ’nuff said.
-M