ClearContext Corporate Blog

An MSNBC article by Eve Tahmincioglu has some interesting stats on information overload and it’s impact in the workplace:

"Turns out, seven out of 10 office workers in the United States feel overwhelmed by information in the workplace, and more than two in five say they are headed for a data “breaking point,” according to a recently released Workplace Productivity Survey, commissioned by LexisNexis — a provider of business information solutions."

I like this article because it hits on one of my mantras – good email management should be part of everyone’s core skill set:

"Mike Walsh, CEO of LexisNexis U.S. Legal Markets, says there are a host of reasons we’re all on the information brink: "exponential growth of the size of the information ‘haystack,’ the ubiquity and immediacy of digital communications, and the fact that professionals are not being provided with sufficient tools and training to help them keep pace with the growing information burden.""

I probably also like it because there’s a brief mention of ClearContext.  🙂  Read the article for more overload stats and some tips (on page 2) for alleviating the strain.

The second edition of Michael Linenberger’s #1 best-selling Outlook book, Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook, has been released today.  See the announcement here.  In conjunction with the new book, we have released a new TWC-powered version of ClearContext.  Details below.

Manage-Your-Now!

In the 2nd edition of Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook, Michael introduces an entirely new theory of task management that he calls Manage-Your-Now! (MYN for short).  Here’s what he has to say about the new system:

"…it is a system to successfully manage the overload of work that you have on your plate right now. It truly does help you manage that period of time you tend to be most anxious about: your now. It helps you choose what tasks to do now, what e-mail to focus on now, what not to worry about now. You gain confidence that the important tasks are attended to, which greatly lowers any anxiety you might have about your workday."

I had the pleasure of reviewing the book before it was published and found that the MYN system perfectly articulates the way that I have managed my tasks for years; providing focus on the things that must be completed in the next week or so and pushing everything else outside the "Now Horizon."  MYN puts process behind this concept to ensure that you stay focused on your immediate tasks without dropping the ball on anything coming over the horizon.  For a more thorough look at the theory, see this sample chapter from the book.

MYN-powered ClearContext IMS for Microsoft Outlook

In conjunction with Michael Linenberger, ClearContext has developed an MYN-powered version of ClearContext IMS.  The new release comes pre-configured to support the MYN system and includes 14 new custom Outlook views, a customized TWC toolbar, tighter integration of TWC teachings in the product, and much more.  See our TWC partner page for more detail.  If you have questions about the new product, ask about them in our forums.

We are very excited about the release of Michael’s new book and our software to support it.  If you are looking for a comprehensive, end-to-end task management methodology, check out the new Manage-Your-Now system and MYN-IMS v4.

By default, ClearContext opens Outlook with a date-ordered, color-coded view.  Much like the default Messages view in Outlook, this shows messages in the order that they are received; adding email priority color-coding and Topics for better message management.

Did you know that there are a lot of additional options for IMS Inbox viewing?  In addition to the default view, ClearContext can display email in priority order and provide gmail-like threading of messages.  I encourage you to go to ClearContext > Inbox Views > View Selection Wizard and find a view that works for you.

For more information on ClearContext views and view management, including customizing view colors, see our User Guide.

Unless you work in a vacuum, you have tasks that you rely on others to complete.  Whether you are expecting a response from a team member, partner or customer, the onus is on you to make sure that these tasks are completed in time to meet your own work goals.  I use two tools to create these tasks – Followup Message and Delegate – and track both via the status field on Outlook tasks.

Followup Message

Use Followup Message when sending a message that you need to hear back on.  As you send the message, click the Followup Message button and set a time frame for the response you need.  If you don’t hear back within the time specified, IMS will notify you.  If you do hear back, the task will automatically be marked complete.  You can also create a Followup task after the message has been sent by highlighting the sent message and selecting Followup Message from the ClearContext menu.

Delegate

Delegate converts email to either an Outlook delegated task (perfect for members of your internal team) or forwards an email and creates a personal task on your task list (better for external delegation).  Delegate is accessed from the ClearContext menu.  If you find that you use this feature a lot, you can add it to the Inbox toolbar.  As you create a delegated task, assign a status of Waiting on someone else…

Delegation Management

Since a status of Waiting on someone else… is assigned to both followups and delegated tasks, you can sort your task list by status and quickly glance at what has been delegated to others.

US News and World Report published a (timely) article on productivity for entrepreneurs.  Productivity: How to Do More in Less Time by Elaine Appleton Grant talks about several tools that “solopreneurs” use to stay productive and efficient:

“Already, savvy entrepreneurs are dramatically improving their productivity and boosting their sales. But as these small companies grow, so do their workloads. Rather than add employees and overhead, many employ virtual assistants to do the mundane tasks they simply don’t have the time to do.”

Thanks to customer Denise Reynolds who put in a plug for ClearContext!

There have been some really interesting discussions of late on the failures of current email systems.  Michael Arrington at TechCrunch writes 2,433 Unread Emails Is An Opportunity For An Entrepreneur:

"I routinely declare email bankruptcy and simply delete my entire inbox. But even so, I currently have 2,433 unread emails in my inbox. Plus another 721 in my Facebook inbox. and about thirty skype message windows open with unanswered messages. It goes without saying, of course, that my cell phone voicemail box is also full (I like the fact that new messages can’t be left there, so I have little incentive to clear it out).

How do I deal with email now? I scan the from and subject fields for high payoff messages. People I know who don’t waste my time, or who I have a genuine friendship with. Or descriptive subject lines that help me understand that I should allot a minute or more of my life to opening it and reading it."

To which our CEO Deva responds Hi Techcrunch, I can solve your email problems:

"’I scan the from and subject fields for high payoff messages.’ – NO, NO, NO!  Nobody with any volume can do that and stay on top of email.  By analyzing your email history and all sorts of contextual clues about incoming email, this is something that can be done automatically
– and we do.

Jeremiah Owyang rants in Email Consumes Us:

"Ironically, most of my social media peers and I still use email as one of the main ways to communicate back and forth to each other But even more, there are more inboxes to check, twitter, facebook, linkedin, I’m getting business messages from these tools and I’m sure you are too."

Deva’s response:

"As I’ve been writing about for a while, the very nature of email itself is changing.  Two major things have changed about email in the past few years.  The volume (duh, more!) and the nature (it’s no longer just individual messages, it’s projects and tasks and collaboration).

Yet email clients are still fundamentally designed to process messages one by one and treat them as independent units of data.  That approach just doesn’t scale and doesn’t reflect the type of connected and context-rich information contained within email."

If this sort of thing interests you, I encourage you to read the posts in full, including the 100’s of comments on the TechCrunch post.  Commenter’s advice to Arrington falls into three broad areas: get an email processing methodology, use technology for better filtering and management, or hire an assistant (if you don’t have the luxury, see my previous two links).

I’m pleased to see a problem that we have been addressing for years get some attention.  As Deva mentions in his posts above, our next release will get us even closer to our vision for email automation – prioritization of incoming email, categorization of information, aggregation of related information, and context-specific actions for different types of information.

I’m a little late to the game on this, but last week Lifehacker pointed to an interesting post by Dan Markovitz on the root causes of email overload:

"For example, I’ve spilled a lot of electronic ink (fortunately, electrons are cheap) telling you how to manage email. But I’m now wondering whether my advice has merely been addressing the symptoms, and not the actual problem. Which is to say, I’m giving advice on how to handle email once it’s hit your inbox. But perhaps I should be focusing more on the root cause of all those emails."

Dan makes a good case for running more analysis on the content of email to see if you can help alleviate the problem before it gets to you. 

Here’s my advice to Dan and anyone else who is looking to keep their Inbox leaner:

• Top five ways to reduce email traffic
• Eliminate carbon copy bloat
• Use Unsubscribe to keep unwanted email threads from hitting your Inbox

Read the comments on the LifeHacker post for more suggestions on tackling the problem.

Have you bought into the idea that you should only check email a couple of times a day, but you are worried that you will miss a really important message?  Our Vista Gadget is designed for you.

1. Download and install the gadget from here. 
2. Once it’s installed, click the wrench next to the gadget for configuration options.
3. Select the priority you want to filter by from the Filter By Priority drop down.  I suggest High or Very High.
4. Click OK.

Now, when you’re ready to focus on your work for the day, select Do Not Disturb, minimize Outlook, and let the gadget tell you if a really important message arrives.

For more information on the gadget, see the ClearContext Inbox Alert User Guide.

Something for you to think about over the weekend.  David Sengupta at Ferris Research had this to say about the problems of Attention Deficit Trait (ADT)  – symptoms of ADD brought on by an "interrupt-driven lifestyle":

"Consider some hypothetical calculations (plug in whatever numbers make sense in your company):

• 1/2 hour per day wasted productivity per employee 
• Assume an 8-hour working day — that’s 1/16 lost productivity 
• So for every $100,000 individual on email, you’ve lost $6,250 per year

Whatever way you slice the numbers, this is a big cost."

I think that most of his assumptions are conservative, but you get the idea.  Check out our savings calculator to run some numbers for your team or company.

BTW – I started to take the ADD self assessment test that he links to, but I got distracted…

I have not personally experienced this issue, but there continue to be reports on the tubes of native Outlook 2007 performance issues.  In most cases, an upgrade to Office 2007 SP1 and some mail file maintenance will resolve the problem.  But if you continue to experience issues, here are some pages that will help you troubleshoot:

• Microsoft KB: How to troubleshoot performance issues in Outlook 2007
• SlipStick: Outlook 2007 is very slow
• Outlook Team Blog: Sync Filters and Performance

I’m particularly fond of the last tip.  I advise folks to try and keep their primary mail file small, but if you’re an Exchange User and you want to leave your entire mail file on the server, setting up some sync filters might be just what you need to keep things running smoothly.