Email Overload
Who doesn’t suffer from email overload these days? Even my 75 year old mother sometimes claims she’s getting too much email!
Some time last year, I found this nice add-in for Outlook (yes, that’s what I have to use at work) that does and incredible job in prioritizing and organizing my email. It has even the right name: Clear Context It does a lot of other nice things too, like scheduling something out from an email into my calendar with the push of a button, or creates a task from a message.
The feature I like the most and use all the time is something very simple but very timeconsuming: filing messages. IMS implements a nice way of doing it by keeping track of the folder/topic you assign for the very first message in a thread, and then it just remembers it. You could either press the File Message or the File thread to get them out of you inbox and into the right folder. Your replys are also filed in the same folders if you whish, so you keep the whole conversation together. This is something I really like!
You could also defer messages and get them out of the way until sometime in the future, where they pop-up again as a new message. Isn’t that something nice?
Another powerfull functionality is a set of views for your inbox that puts the real important stuff right at the top. You could tweak this quite a bit, so all those powerusers out there would love this. By pressing the Related View button you get a powerfull view of all items related to that specific email you’re looking at. All this makes it a snap to find that important emial buried deep in some folder.
If you have to concentrate on your really important tasks instead of working your email all the time, the Alert function comes in really handy. Once set up, it will only notify you if there are messages that need your immediate attention. That is a productivity booster!
As you know, I’m also experimenting with GTD and yes, Clear Context helps with this too. They even have a guide explaining how to use their product with David Allen’s methodology.
I’ve used Clear Context since version 2 and they have recently released version 4 of this marvel. Here’s a demo you might enjoy while getting the opportunity to appreciate all the new stuff they are putting into this version.
5 comments so far
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that website inspired we much
interesting info on that blog.
The topic so much desired.
does anyone knows if there is any other information about this subject in other languages?
It has long been looking for this information, thank you.
I tried Clear Context too, but do you know Lookeen? It is much better to organize your e-mails than Clear Context, it isnt a second application like clear context, it is integrated in outlook, so you don´t have to switch between lookeen and outlook! Another positiv point of lookeen is that it is searching your e-mails and Clear Context is prioritizing your mails! Even if Clear Context is a good tool, I prefer Lookeen, because it has a lot of other good features which are worth to switch! If you interested here the url: http://www.lookeen.com
As you said, Clear Context is different and it does something different that your product doesn’t, namely prioritize and it is also and add-on for Outlook and not a separate application… Your product might be interesting too, but don’t pitch it wrongly against a different one, it will hurt your brand in the long run.