ClearContext Corporate Blog

We’ve posted a few updates to the tutorial page over the last week.  Here’s the latest email message filing tutorial:

There’s more to come…

As long time readers are aware, we are big fans of partner Michael Linenberger’s no-nonsense approach to email and task management.  This week he has released a new productivity book, Master Your Workday Now! Michael’s new book outlines an approach for overcoming overwhelm and achieving your highest level goals.  From www.masteryourworkday.com:

“Within minutes of picking up this book you will:

• Get more done, more quickly (and then get home earlier)…
• Eliminate overwhelm (because it’s impossible to accomplish the critical, big-picture tasks when you’re buried under an avalanche of ‘minutiae’)…
• Develop hyper-focus, and concentrate on the task-at-hand (so you’re less prone to distraction from outside influences)…
• Create, and master, a more productive life…
• Have your day support your goals.
• Restore much-needed sanity to your work life…
• Instill order and sense to your daily tasks and e-mail …

For a limited time, Michael is including a free bonus video and other gifts when you order Master Your Workday Now! See MasterYourWorkday.com for more detail.

The Office 2010 team has posted comprehensive information regarding the 64-Bit release of Office, including details on who should install Office 2010 x64:

“If you’re trying to decide between 32-bit and 64-bit Office, you should ask yourself what your needs are. Are you an Excel power user working with huge amounts of data? Do you need to work with file sizes greater than 2 GB? If so, then you would benefit from 64-bit Office being able to utilize more memory. If not, we’re recommending 32-bit Office 2010 as the default installation on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows mainly due to compatibility with existing 32-bit controls, add-ins, and VBA.”

Additional detail:

“Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office are largely indistinguishable, except that 64-bit Office has a much higher memory capacity. As mentioned above, the extra memory capacity comes at the cost of some compatibility with existing extensions to Office, such as 32-bit versions of ActiveX Controls and some 3rd party add-ins, in addition to 32-bit versions of programs that interface directly with Office. New versions of these extensions will need to be obtained, and it will take some time for 64-bit compatible extensions to be made available.

For these reasons, we recommend running 32-bit Office 2010 even on 64-bit Windows operating systems for better compatibility. On 64-bit Windows, more applications and documents may be opened at once, and switching among them will be faster because the machine can have more physical memory for the processes to share. When the 64-bit ecosystem for Office is more mature, you’ll be able to easily migrate to 64-bit Office!”

In the near term, if you want to run ClearContext in Outlook 2010, you should install the 32-bit version of Office 2010.  For information on future ClearContext support for 2010 x64, see this forum post.

As we continue to work on our Dashboard redesign, we have a couple of questions:

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We’d also like to hear any comments you have about what you find most useful about the To Do Bar, what other information you wish you could see in the To Do Bar, and what other tasks you wish you could accomplish from the To Do Bar.  Please post any thoughts you have in the comments section below, thanks!

For those of your running Outlook 2010; the Outlook team has posted a patch to fix a message size bug in Outlook 2010.  We haven’t noticed the issue here, but it must be a pretty nasty bug for MSFT to decide to release a patch to pre-release software.  Details and a download here.

We’re always on the lookout for other products that also help people increase their productivity. Buzz Bruggeman and the team at ActiveWords have released a new version of their product, which allows you to script just about anything in Windows so you can type words to do all sorts of actions with simple keyboard shortcuts.  Their latest release includes a free version that lets you create up to 30 ActiveWords – and you can upgrade to their Plus version to create unlimited words.  Lots of our users have taken advantage of this to create custom shortcuts for ClearContext and other applications.  The ActiveWords/Freemium release is now available for everyone to download and check it out!

Here are a few recent email management articles to chew on:

Lifehack.org: Unanswered Email Undermines Your Productivity

“What we don’t see clearly is that we do damage to our reputations and to our time management systems when we don’t manage individual habits. A bad habit that becomes a ritual can drag down our productivity, without our knowing it.”

bijansabet.com: Little things to make email better

“1 [of 4 tips] – I’m paying close attention to the number of emails I send out. … The more emails you send, the more you get back.”

Career Realism: 9 Tips for Mastering Email Overload

“Taming email means training the senders to put the burden of quality back on themselves. What’s the best way to train everyone around you to better email habits? You guessed it: You go first. Set the example, be the role model. Demonstrate a policy for a month, and if people like it, ask them to start doing the same.”

Our previous blog post was about the backlog of messages many of us start off with in the new year.  Well, we’re here to help with that! We’d like to see everyone to start the new year by letting the new ClearContext v5 help them take control of their inbox.  And we’d love for you to help us spread the word!

Through the end of January, we’re giving away a ClearContext Pro license every day.  There are multiple ways to enter the drawing, such as following us on twitter or facebook, or tweeting about ClearContext.  And we appreciate everyone who has already supported us – you are all eligible as well!  In addition to licenses to new users, we’re also giving away upgrades, ClearContext Connect subscriptions, and other prizes to people who are already ClearContext users!  Click here for more details on how to participate.

Thanks so much for your support and helping us spread the word about ClearContext to all of your friends and colleagues who could use a little help getting their inbox under control!

The last half of December is always a welcome break from nonstop email, with many people away from work and computers during the holidays spending time with friends and family.  I’m glad to count myself among that group this year!  ClearContext Online email statistics show that overall people received 1/3 to 1/2 less email than normal over the past couple of weeks. What a relief!

But now it’s 2010 and the first week of January brings with it a return to the normal avalanche of email – as well as a backlog of messages waiting for us.  That’s where ClearContext comes to the rescue!

A lot of the changes in ClearContext v5 are designed to make it faster than ever to clear out overloaded inboxes. Automatic highlighting of your important messages, one-click email filing, and project buttons help you stay on top of everything you need to get done.

It’s easy to let email take control of your day, but ClearContext lets you take control of your inbox!

I knew that Jason Clarke and I shared similar ideas on email management when I read his 2005 post If Your Inbox Has More Than a Screenful of Messages In It, You’re Rude.  On his new blog Inbox Era, he again makes the case for clearing the Inbox:

“To truly get a handle on your email communication, you need to have a goal of emptying your inbox regularly. When asked why they do it, most people who keep everything in their inbox respond with, “I can’t delete it; what if I need it?”

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it doesn’t scale. If you are only receiving 5 email messages per day, then sure, you can probably keep everything in your inbox and find the items you need when you need them. But if you start receiving 50 email messages per day, that gets a lot harder, very quickly. I would argue that even if you only receive 5 emails per day, you should still empty your inbox as a habit, because your email volume will invariably increase over time. Good habits are just as hard to break as bad ones are, so instill good ones now.

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