CES 2010 v. My Inbox

We keep mentioning how big the Consumer Electronics show is because it is, in fact, almost incomprehensibly gigantic. You have to see it to believe it, and even when you see it, you don’t believe it because it’s impossible to see it all.  You feel how big it is – with your feet. Unless you’ve seen something unimaginably large, like a T. Rex in your bathroom, you can’t grasp the scale of this event. Thousands of exhibitors, gazillions of shiny, noisy things; what’s a fellow to make of it all?

Useless information is a productivity killer. The trick, in all things from work to play, is to know what’s necessary, enlightening, energizing and fun – the gems that make life worthwhile. Like most, I get an unimaginable amount of email. Outlook is my everyday CES. When the din of data becomes deafening, I fine-tune my Inbox, a meditation on information management, with Best Practices for Microsoft Outlook 2007 as my guide (keep an eye peeled for the Outlook 2010 version of this doc). I refine my folder structure, rules, alerts, Smart Folders and habits, and almost always I take a leap of faith, trusting technology to live up to its promise to make me more efficient.

When what works is counterintuitive, leaps of faith are useful. For example, I don’t need to read or touch most of the email I get; my gut tells me that’s crazy. Reality tells me otherwise. Finely tuned, Outlook reveals the most useful information, catalogs the rest. Be nice if CES was that simple.

--Louis Broome