ClearContext Corporate Blog

We recommend the following best practices for managing your workday with ClearContext:

Identify

Start your workday by identifying what you need to focus on.

Review today’s meetings and appointments.  Reschedule any conflicts.

Review your Tasks and Actions for the day in the ClearContext Dashboard.  Adjust due dates based on task and project priorities.

Review overdue and pinned projects in the ClearContext Dashboard to determine which Projects require immediate attention.

Identify your highest priority messages so that you are prepared to manage your Inbox.

Taking this time in the morning will get your priorities in place to ensure that you have a productive day.

Tip

Before you move on to the Manage phase and tackle your Inbox for the first time, work on one or two of your most important tasks.

Tomorrow: Twice daily, manage your inbox…

The ClearContext Daily Workflow is a three step process for managing Outlook that will save an hour or more per day.  We developed these best practices in conjunction with productivity experts and our very passionate customer base to help overloaded individuals empty their inbox and get on top of their workday:

First thing in the morning, identify the day's priorities:

1. Review your calendar 
2. Review your daily task list 
3. Review your alerts

Twice daily, manage your Inbox:

Quickly review each message and determine when you need to act on it:

1. Act immediately?  Reply, Delegate, or Review and File 
2. Act later?  Defer, Create a Task or Appointments 
3. No action required?  Unsubscribe or Delete

Throughout the day, succeed by focusing on what's important:

1. Work on your tasks by project 
2. Review high priority messages only 
3. View all related information on To Do's

Over the next few days, we will review each step in more detail.

Over the last several years we have been working with experts in the field of productivity along with a very passionate and vocal customer base to develop a world class productivity tool to help ease the burden of information overload.  Along the way, we have collected a series of best practices for managing information and squeezing more productivity out of the day.

In conjunction with the IMS v4 release, we have distilled these concepts into a process to help our customers get the most out of the product.  The result is the ClearContext IMS Daily Workflow, a three step process for managing information that will help save an hour or more per day:

First thing in the morning, identify the day’s priorities:

1. Review your calendar 
2. Review your daily task list 
3. Review your alerts

Twice daily, manage your Inbox:

Quickly review each message and determine when you need to act on it:

1. Act immediately?  Reply, Delegate, or Review and File 
2. Act later?  Defer, Create a Task or Appointments 
3. No action required?  Unsubscribe or Delete

Throughout the day, succeed by focusing on what’s important:

1. Work on your tasks by project 
2. Review high priority messages only 
3. View all related information on To Do’s

We believe in the benefits of productivity methodologies such as Total Workday Control and Getting Things Done.  The IMS Daily Workflow doesn’t replace these methodologies, but rather provides a framework to hit the ground running with IMS.  We still recommend that you take best practices from all of these methodologies to find something that works best for you.

The IMS Daily Workflow is the culmination of years of development with our customers via product and process feedback, forum participation and weblog conversations.  We will be expanding each of these steps in great detail via the weblog in the coming months.  In the meantime, check out our Solutions Pages for more detail.

Up Next: Identify the day’s priorities…

We’ve updated our User Guide to include new features for v4, including the IMS Dashboard, Alerts, Do Not Disturb and Toolbar Management.  The downloadable PDF of the User Guide includes additional information about the IMS Daily Workflow.