Building a Second Brain in Microsoft 365 — An introduction

Building a Second Brain in Microsoft 365 — An introduction

This blog article is also published on LinkedIn. Imagine that you had a second brain outside your body that could think for you. That would quietly work in the background, helping you preserve your precious attention and energy for your most important commitments. It's now entirely possible to achieve. In my article I go through the purpose of such a second brain and give an introduction to how to build one for yourself in Microsoft 365. Introduction The idea of having a Second Brain has caught on among knowledge workers the past years, in particular in the US. Through his…
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Building a Second Brain in Microsoft 365

Building a Second Brain in Microsoft 365

Have you read Tiago Forte's book "Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential" and now wonder how to build one for yourself in Microsoft 365? Great idea, indeed! It works very well! And has been tested by a number of knowledge workers. ? It can though be difficult to know what exactly you can use each app for, and in this article I provide an overview of each app's place in a second brain based on our deep and long experience. In the article, I take it that you already…
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Why mastering your notes could be a good idea and how to get started

Why mastering your notes could be a good idea and how to get started

This article is also published on LinkedIn. Do you feel that you don't get enough value from the notes you take at work? Maybe it is time you revise your practice around notes and upgrade yourself in how you relate to such information. In this article I hope to give you some input on that. Let's start with not getting sufficient value from your notes. Maybe you cannot find the information you have capture when you would need it because you have more than one place where you store your notes? Having to look in many different places for notes…
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Focus on developing reliable behaviours – a key aspect to mastering Microsoft 365

Focus on developing reliable behaviours – a key aspect to mastering Microsoft 365

If your organization has its e-mail in Microsoft 365 there's a good chance that you have been exposed to some of the other many apps of Microsoft 365.  Maybe you have received an email from Microsoft Viva with an analysis of your daily work habits? Or maybe you have seen the (blue) ToDo icon in the navigation pane of your desktop Outlook? In fact, you have access to a lot of apps that have the potential to increase your personal productivity and well-being (the best place to view the apps you have access to use is www.office.com and then on the left…
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Come Monday morning…

Come Monday morning…

It's Monday again, after a, hopefully, relaxing weekend. Maybe you've time spent outdoors and in nature, having had a great opportunity to wind down. Your brain has been able to enter a relaxed state of mind. Not like during a longer vacation, but still. You can feel that you've become more attentive, to yourself and others. It's a nice feeling and it'd be nice to bring it into the work week. But come Monday morning. And you are not able to keep that mental state for long. There are tasks that have to be remembered. There are meetings that have…
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A need for tools?

A need for tools?

Do you sometimes feel the need to use better tools that helps handle the digital information you've got at work? "Tools" in the same sense that you use when gardening for extending the power of your physical body or when you are cooking. That help you handle situations more productively and more effectively. At work, you might feel the need to: To keep better order of your informationTo come to decision fasterTo be better prepared for meetingsTo be able to better prioritize among your tasksTo be able to communicate in a good wayNot to loose things that are asked of…
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Contact list of all team members, past and present

Contact list of all team members, past and present

It is a good idea to keep the contact details of all team members, both the current ones and past members. It could happen that in the future, the team would need to get help from a previous member in some specific issue. Having the personal contact details of that person would help greatly in such a situation. The best place for this is to use the app Microsoft Lists, see below. The list can be used for various purposes, such as: In the onboarding flow, the new member gets to insert his or her private contact detailsIn the offboarding…
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Offboarding of a team member

Offboarding of a team member

Background That people leave your management team or Board is a fact, and it is not surprising that the turn over rate is higher than ever. For the smooth and effective workings of the team, it is good idea to take a look at your offboarding process. Logical questions to ask are: What open issues are the person who is leaving responsible for? How can the ownership be transferred to the team? What information do we need to continue to work on the issue till its completion? What uncompleted shared tasks does the person have assigned? Similarly, how can we…
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Your team handbook in SharePoint

Your team handbook in SharePoint

Have you started to use Microsoft 365 as your management team's digital workplace? Then you most likely have a need to develop and keep the instructions for how to do things in a good place. In this article I describe where in Microsoft 365 you best could create and keep such information. Introduction to SharePoint As a management team (or Board) you probably already have a Team in Microsoft Teams. The files in your Team are stored in an app called SharePoint Online (the files that you access via the tab "Files" of each channel). SharePoint is designed to allow…
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Onboarding of a new member

Onboarding of a new member

In your management team or your Board there will be new members arriving and old members leaving on a regular basis. For Board of Directors it is normally the annual meeting that this revolves around. In this article I will take a closer look at how an onboarding process can be setup for a management team that is using Microsoft Team as a digital workplace. Introduction It can be a challenge to get the new members into the team and help them to be able to start to contribute. When you team is using Microsoft 365, it can be quite…
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