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There are a couple of Outlook addin applications that I use and use quite extensively.   ClearContext is one of those applications… If you are like me and you deal with a literal ton of email every day you owe it to yourself to take a look at this addin.

If you’ve ever wanted to:

• Unsubscribe from an email thread that you were carbon copied on as an FYI and the rest of the world that was also carbon copied is responding with a Reply All
• Defer a piece of email until a later date and have it magically reappear in your InBox
• Delegate an email to someone as either an Outlook managed task or as an email with an automatic reminder for you to do a followup at a future date
• Create Tasks or Schedule Appointments for things that you need to do and have it automatically include a copy of the email for you to use as a reminder when the Task or Schedule come due on your Outlook calendar
• File messages into specific folders and not only received but sent messages
• Categorize and color code your inbox so the real important stuff filters to the top to be addressed first
• See all messages, tasks and appointments that are related to each other

ClearContext is the tool for you, and from INSIDE Outlook - ClearContext adds two new toolbars to the top of your existing outlook screens.  (I don’t use Windows Vista so I’m not sure what it does there.) 

Our coporate email is also on an Exchange Server.   ClearContext works just fine.   We also have a document retention policy that in no way is long enough for me so I use the filing features of ClearContext to also help me keep an Archive of all of my email locally so that when my corporate mail servers start purging I still have local copies.

Many of you may have seen that I just finished reading David Allen’s book called Getting Things Done.  I can say that I found ClearContext prior to finding Allen’s book and I found the things that it could do fit perfectly with how I wanted to manage my Outlook life.   I don’t know which came first GTD or ClearContext but I can see how ClearContext fits within Allen’s methods perfectly.  The point here is even if you have no intention of employing any of the GTD practices there are features in this addin that make it a great productivity enhancer and worth every penny you pay.  I use it and would never go back to an Outlook without it.

There is a free demo available for you to try at the ClearContext website.   Download it… play with it… use just a feature or two to start… by all means take the tutorials they offer… before you know it your Outlook nightmares will be diminished.

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