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ClearContext in Context

by Scot Herrick on November 17th, 2006

Yesterday, alas, I hit one of those “no-no” buttons. Like Control-Alt-Delete but back in the days of the DOS three-finger salutes…you know, those kinds of buttons (I told you I’m Old Skool).

Fortunately, my clicking accident was a stroke of good fortune. You see, it defaulted my ClearContext view of my e-mail in Outlook to “Prioritized by Day” instead of “Threaded.”

ClearContext is an add-on to Outlook — and it’s a good one that I’ve used for almost a year now. The basic premise of ClearContext is that it allows you to automatically organize your e-mail inbox and then give you a cool toolbar allowing you to perform various functions in Outlook (like schedule an appointment in Outlook from the e-mail you are currently reading).

But I’m cantankerous. Set in my ways. I’m allowed (I’m a Pimp!). The way I unilaterally set up my e-mail view was “Threaded.” I always hate getting e-mails on one subject and then 14,200 replies to it spread out all over my inbox. ClearContext just put all of those with the same subject line together in a row regardless of where they were in the inbox (threaded conversations). This allowed me to read all the conversational thread at one time. I didn’t even think about any of the other options. I just did it “threaded.”

Yesterday, I accidentally hit the selection that said “Prioritize by Day” and it totally changed my e-mail box view around. Naturally, with five minutes between meetings. And me not knowing exactly what I did and exactly how to get it back to *my* way (or the highway…).

Prioritize by Day is simple in concept and done wonderfully by ClearContext automatically. Essentially, place my most important e-mails at the top of the inbox — colored important too! — and then the medium ones, then the OK ones and then the least essential ones. Changing the importance is easy on the fly too — just click on the ClearContext Contact button and you can move the person’s e-mail importance up or down the chain. My boss got moved up the priority listing; sometimes it is necessary to override the program even though the program was right…!

In any case, instead of whining about hitting the wrong button, I instead did the essential Pimp thing and went with the flow.

Somehow, after all of this time, ClearContext automatically figured out who all of my most important contacts were and there they were, right at the top of my e-mail box. Except my boss, but then I changed that on the fly.

After my non-stop meeting day, with an hour to go at the end of the day, I started working the fifty e-mails from the top, doing that GTD thing employing the two-minute rule where you either do whatever in the e-mail or decide the next action for the e-mail and put it into your system as some type of task in Outlook using the ‘task’ button from ClearContext. Or, if an appointment, the ’schedule’ button.

Following the defaulted Priority by Day method, a lot of stress went out of my (non-existent) office window. Once complete with the action on the e-mail, ClearContext deleted it and moved me to the next one down the list as prioritized. All the most important first. Then the next important. Then the two interruptions from calls and people - but I knew my most important e-mails were already handled. Then down the list again.

Fifty e-mails processed in less than one hour. Prioritized. I’m glad I went with the flow.

The lesson to me was that I need to try different things with the tools we use. We get stuck in our ways and miss out on the opportunities that the designer designed the system to accomplish.

So try something different with one of your tools today. Don’t be cantankerous like some (er…ONE) author on this blog.

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