I first wrote about the tools I use on an everyday basis in a series of posts that began here. In the time since, I've adopted a number of new tools and dropped some as well. And, my approach to Getting Things Done has evolved to include a tool kit that goes beyond Outlook to provide a more holistic approach to setting and managing goals, working through complex projects, and creating time for the things I truly enjoy - spending time with my family and writing.
Outlook is still the hub for this system - there's simply not another tool that so perfectly meets my needs as a "dashboard" for my day. I've looked at a number of other information managers and have found most of them require too much work to maintain given how central e-mail is to my daily workflow. They do represent some truly innovative thinking though, and I'll include in this series of posts as brief list of alternative tools for managing all of your information for those who find Outlook a less than ideal choice.
To get things started, I present to you two lists. The first are the add-in tools I currently employ in Outlook to extend its basic, out-of-the-box capabilities. The second list includes the other applications and utility programs I use on an everyday basis to manage all of the commitments I have made in my professional and personal life. Many I have written about before while others are making their first appearance here. But in order to be included in the list, they have had to survive pretty rigorous testing from both a productivity enhancing as well as a stability perspective. For a great guide to measuring the worth of a new tool, I recommend you adopt Jeff Sandquist's Seven Day Rule.
The Outlook Equation:
NewsGator + Anagram + GTD add-in + Bells & Whistles + Tablet Enhancements for Outlook
Applications & Utilities:
OneNote + MindManager X5 Pro + ResultManager + ActiveWords + x1 + ClipMate
I've written about many of these tools before. What will follow over the next few days is a brief recap of each of these tools and what they contribute to my system for productivity. There is one final category of tools that I haven't made my final decision on yet. I've been testing the three leading candidates in the information gathering space and am getting close to making my final selection. For the curious, the three tools I'm evaluating are:
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Onfolio 2.0 (beta)
I'm developing a comparative review of all three which I hope to finish up by the end of the year.
Stay tuned.
NOTE: As has become clear from the first comment received on this post, I should make it clear that there are a number of excellent tools, including NEO Pro and ClearContext that I'm unable to offer a valid opinion about because they don't support IMAP mail and that is what I use for the bulk of my message traffic. So, if you don't see your favorite tool mentioned as this series continues, feel free to add a recommendation and brief review like the one that follows this post. Andrew from the Naquada blog has contributed an excellent look at the very popular NEO Pro organizer for Outlook.
1. I'm surprise Nelson Email Pro isnt in your Outlook list.. its a great application for keeping on top of your inbox.. I talked about it on my blog a while back after I brought it;
http://www.naquada.co.uk/archives/clearing_and_maintai.html
It's a companion product to Microsoft Outlook (pretty much all versions including 2004), Nelson Email Organizer or NEO is a pretty innovative new interface for managing and searching email.
Since its a companion product to Outlook it in effect sits on top of Outlook and automatically organizes your email into easy-to-access views; by correspondent, date, mailing list, attachment and more.
Now the thing that really sold it to me was the on-the-fly word indexing. Neo is constantly indexing every email, subject, body, sender, category, attachments, and gives and a web-style search method.
Lets take a case in point. Ever tried to search for an word in the BODY of an email? Theres two major problems in trying to do this in Outlook.
Firstly. I have multiple .pst files so I have to perform the search on each .pst in turn. Secondly Outlooks speed for searching inside the body of an email means that I may as well go and refind the information on the web, or the library. Neo (or in my case Neo Pro)will search my entire 2 gig of .pst's in pretty much seconds. I think the longest I've waited for an in email body search was about 30 seconds, and thats because I wanted a 'sounds like' as opposed to the faster exact word.
Now you need to rethink a little when you use Neo or Neo Pro, but its not hard and over time you get better at it. There still some functionallity I havent used yet, but I'll pull it in over time!
So, Firstly, forget multiple pst files, even if you have multiple outlook personal storage files (i have about 8!) Neo pro sees then as a unified store of email, regardless of where it is.
You get I guess somethign like Caller ID for email, in that you can make a particular email address or contact 'HOT', if I get an email from them it notifies me straight away about it, and it appears in my HOT category. So straight away I'm zeroing in on the important stuff not the trivia in my inbox.
I can also mark folders in outlook or subjects as 'HOT' meaning they rise right up to the top of my view. Folders I use often are kept in the forefront.
Neo works on the idea of New, Current and Dormant (as well as HOT). So things like folders I've used in say, the last 3 weeks stay at the top of my tree, if I havent used them for longer they drop into my dormant area. The same with email addresses. People I regularly get email from stay in my current and new and hot areas, people that havent emailed me for a while drop into dormant, and eventually old contacts.
I can define 'bulk' email, not spam email, but email that is sent on mass to many people. I can choose to send that to the background, I have ultimate control over that, so mailing lists, get batted out of my inbox into a mailing folder for me to read at leisure.
I can also search on a conversation, which is much better than outlooks conversation search. I can see everything relating to a particular conversation I had on email, even if the subject or receipients change.
Neo can also keep track of a 'contact' even if they have multiple email addresses. I get this alot with some of the system integators I talk with, they have their lets say @bobsamazinconsulting.com email address, but they move from company to company and get an email address for that company as well. I can view them as a whole, regardless of where they sent the email from so I can see all emails from Bob Smith even if hes emailed me from his home email, his current customer email or his real work email.
Neo also integrates seamlessly into Outlook. It lets Outlook handle the non email tasks, and it takes over the email, and most importantly it doesnt change email in anyway at all, so no loss of email worries! Thats something that really worried me at first, I cant afford to loose my email! It also still syncs with my iPaq perfectly.
On the whole its saved me so much time and its one of the best $69.95's I've spent, and I'd definately recommend getting Caelo Neo Pro rather than just plain Neo.
Posted at 6:18AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Naquada