REVIEW: ClearContext

If I were a software company producing productivity enhancing tools I’d love to have a tag line of:

Use ‘X’ – it’ll save you at least a minute a day!

I think this would be interesting for a number of reasons:

1. It’s believable
2. People would be able to easily verify the claim (much better than that ‘improves performance by 39.8%’ tosh we get bombarded with)
3. The claim is so tiny it makes you think. What seems laughable at first, is actually useful over time ie 6 hours a year
4. You’ll probably assume this is the minimum and look for more benefits (ie expect to be over-delivered to)
5. The company will have credibility early on (since they don’t make outrageous claims)
6. You may laugh and tell your friends

Which brings me to ClearContext. I’ve been using ClearContext for 9 months or so now and I think it is pretty useful. It’s not revolutionising my daily productivity or anything outrageous like that, but I can tell you that whenever I re-install my machine, Outlook seems pretty vanilla until I get ClearContext re-installed.

ClearContext is an Outlook add-in. It’s basically a tool for organising and managing your Outlook ‘habit’. The premise is that we live most of our working day in Outlook, so by adding a few simple shortcuts we can make our day more productive. Even if only by a few minutes here and there.

I couldn’t really do justice to all its features (and I only use a few anyway) so you’re better off checking out the site directly. For the record my favourite feature is the ‘Defer’ button.

It’s a great product and I recommend it. They have a free version and a Professional version (which I have – yep I shelled out the bucks).

 

My only problem with ClearContext… their claims. If I’d seen their annual saving calculator before I’d purchased I’d have thought twice… If you want an example of ROI marketing gone too far make sure you click on the Calculate button.

They’ve just released their new version which I downloaded and installed straight away. As usual it is fast, intuitive and saving me time – a minute at least :-) – every day.