There is still time to sign up! We’re doing the final in house testing for our Alpha version now and are shooting for next week to release the Beta version. If you haven’t done so yet, you’ll need to update your Outlook 2003 to Service Pack 2 in order to try it out.

We’ll be contacting everyone via email with the Beta download instructions when it’s ready.

Cheers

Mark

Last week I had a conversation with Harry Lorayne. If you don’t know who he is, in a nutshell he’s the foremost expert in memory enhancement techniques or “mnemonics“.

I’ve read some of his books and found his methods of memory retrieval quite effective. One in particular that I like is called the Link System and I got to thinking about how this fits in with tagging. I asked Harry for permission to quote reference to it here and he graciously gave me the thumbs up.

We usually file our email categorically with things like Project Number, City, Customer, etc. Often though, we need to do something related to a message. Since the former categories do not really trigger graphic images to spur us into action, why not use the Link System in conjunction with other tags? Since there’s no limit to the number of tags that you can apply to a message, adding one more may help you remember a task associated with a message.

Here’s an example:

• Let’s say we’re working together in a company that manages many big construction projects.
• You send me an email related to Project XYZ in City A.
• With SideFinder (SF) I can tag the email with “Project XYZ” and “City A”. These tags however are pretty mundane – not easy to remember, and they don’t attach any kind of emotion to the email.
• Now let’s say I had to do something with that email like submit some permits to an environmental division of the government, but I don’t have time right now. I’ll need to remember to do that later.
• One of the principles of any mnemonic is if you want to remember something you have to create an association that’s very graphic or emotive. Why not use a tag to do this? With SF, I can add as many of them as I please.
• Because I need to submit something to an environmental agency in the government, I could tag that email with “tree hugger”. I’ve just tied that email to a graphic, emotive word.
• Now every time I see that email or one of the other tags I will also see “tree hugger” to help trigger my memory to perform the task. I can also use the image of tree hugger to link to another task from another message in a long To Do list.

I’ve been practicing this with our alpha version of SF and it seems to work. I’m interested in hearing if anyone else has put together a similar life hack using categories or tags.

Mark

I’ve clipped out a few of responses regarding folder issues from the beta signup list. The question is; What is your biggest issue with folders? Feel free to add to the list here…

• Argh! When you have to pre-organize things to get stuff done, it just takes all the fun and productivity out of it.
• It’s too restricting. I’m used to organizing my personal e-mail with Gmail and that allows multiple tags for any given e-mail. I’d like to be able to do the same with work e-mail where we have to use Outlook.
• nightmare to keep up to date
• search across is painful in my current setup, slow search. I’m more comfortable with tagging these days in general, ala flickr.
• Compartmentalitis. Spend a lot of time creating cubbies and a lot of time stashing things in cubbies and a lot of time finding which cubbie i stashed things in.
• I store emails according to their categories (newsletters, or topics etc.), so I have (too) many folders and personal folders file (.pst). It is very difficult to find emails when my emails are scattered in different folders and .pst.
• After I’ve started to implement your AntiFile methodology, I will not go back to the file tree system. So, I am happy you came up with SideFinder and I’d like to use it. Thanks and keep the excellent work!

This is hilarious. It’s from one of our beta testers and she articulates her email gripes so well I just had to post it… Enjoy

Hi, Mark. Thanks for the reply. I will warn you now, you officially “got me started”.

I do use the categories feature of Outlook. From what I’ve been able to tell, it’s just an exercise in doing something that is hard to find again. My mail is automagically categorized when it comes in. Now, how exactly do I take advantage of that? I’m sure there must be a way to use this feature, but I’ve not found it to be immediately obvious, with the email especially I’ve managed to make categories come into play on the task panel and the project list I kludged together, but that’s about it. And as far as category intersections, such as we see with del.icio.us‘ “+” feature, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to filter on more than one category at a time — items in this category AND that category. Instead, I get the same project or task repeated for every category I’ve assigned. This really doesn’t help me at all.

I find that most things I do with Outlook fall into the arena of “kludge”. There’s no graceful way to make all the parts play together without a lot of macro programming, and that’s not where my skills lie. I know that there is usually a complicated, unintuitive method to do anything I really want to do with Outlook, but hey, I’m not into complicated and unintuitive in a premium piece of software. Actually, I’m not into it in *any* software, but especially a premium piece like Outlook.

I’m beginning to think that Outlook is a dinosaur that’s ready to be put down. Seriously. I’ve been a computer operator in one form or another since the mid 80s, using big systems, mid-range systems, desktop systems, and whatever the flavor of the year was, from mainframes through DECs to PCs. I’ve always picked it up quickly and easily, and I’ve even taught people how to use the technologies on their machines, whatever those technologies may be, all through the years. I’ve never seen a system as kludgy as Outlook stick around long, but here Outlook is, long in the tooth and getting kudgier all the time, and if it doesn’t get easier to use (and fast), I’m going to leave it in the dust and fly away with Thunderbird! : ) It will mean going back to paper and pen for my project handling, but truthfully, I’m halfway there already, precisely for the reasons stated above.

This is why your tagging notice appealed to me. When I read it, I envisioned a tag cloud in place of the folders list, and I got all warm and fuzzy thinking about it.

As to why I would prefer to tag rather than rely solely on the sort method as you discuss… I’ve got about 4000 emails in one folder now (and my PST file is nowehere near the 300mb limit). Sort by name… Ok, what name am I looking for? Richard’s print designer sent me his logo, but what was the guy’s name? I don’t remember, as I only had one communication from him, 3 months ago. Did he use a useful subject line? What a surprise — he didn’t. Did Sid’s email come in under his name or under his email address (and just exactly what is his email address again?)? Sometimes it’s one way, sometimes it’s the other. His project name isn’t usually referenced in the subject line, so I can’t sort and select that way. Sometimes I communicate with 3 or 4 people on the same project. Who sent the email about the latest modifications to the Acme site? Was it Tom, Dick or Harry? The subject line, again, is almost totally useless. Most folks put in something completely unhelpful, such as “Changes” or, even worse (my personal hell), “website”. Until people learn to use a subject line correctly, this will continue to be a problem as far as information retrieval.

The correspondant’s name and subject line aren’t the only culprits. Some people have me listed in their address book as webmaster, some as ’shari’ (with single quotes — why, I ask!), some as Shari (no quotes), and the list of permutations goes on. My brother continues to use my webmaster email address for personal correspondence even though I’ve begged him not to, and has named me ‘web’ (yes, with single quotes). In my effort to color code, I found myself creating about 12 organizational rules, and still I have a large percentage of messages showing up in black. I even started over and tried again using email account instead of the FROM or TO field, and then using it in addition to the FROM and TO field, but I ended up with more in black than before. Something isn’t working right. So as you see, even with what should be a simple system, Outlook once again moves into the realm of kludge just to get things to work right — and still they don’t!

Finding things by date doesn’t work for me. I live in a place with one long excruciatingly hot season. It doesn’t matter if it’s summer or winter, it’s hot. My brain records the passage of time by the season. I know this because I haven’t always lived here, and everything I remember from my life before the heatsink is tied to a season. Now that I live where it’s hot no matter what, the passage of time has become essentially undetectable. Half the time, I don’t even know what month or “season” (ha!) it is, unless I look at a calendar or really stop to think (and I mean that literally). So when I try to think about when I may have received an email I’m looking for, all I know is, it was hot. Well, it’s always hot, so that doesn’t help. I’m aware that perhaps not everyone stores information this way, but I do, so I have to take these things into account. Yes, I know… I need to move.

I would absolutely love to know your take on categories, especially in light of the fact that y’all posted the notice about tagging. Or… is this what you were talking about? Using categories to tag? If so, I’m afraid it’s just not going to be as easy as it should be — especially if one were to create many categories. That itty bitty category dialog window is next to useless.

For comparison purposes… I’ve been dumping sites into del.icio.us on a regular basis for quite a while now and have a few thousand sites tagged. And because of that nice little tag cloud, and the “+” feature, I can find whatever site I’m looking for in about 15 seconds max — and usually quicker. I can’t say the same about finding things in Outlook, no matter what method I use. And that’s a shame. Redmond has had more than 10 years to get it right, and they haven’t done it yet.

Well, that’s my rant on the subject. Sorry, but you did ask!

Have a good one!

Shari

Gotta hand it to http://www.sreejith.net for providing and helping with the blog theme design. If you want to build a blog with tons of open source support and you haven’t tried Wordpress stuff you’re missing out. This and many other blogs are built on the Wordpress.com platform and you can find plenty of quality themes such as sreejith’s to suit your site layout. Amazing stuff.
Mark

Ok, all systems go on the blog. Tell us what you think of the layout, etc, or just start a conversation. Cheers!