As I’ve documented previously, I’ve been struggling with performance issues in Outlook for a long time. Well, a friend gave me a suggestion a few days ago that I finally got around to trying today. That suggestion had been made to me in the past, but I wasn’t ready to believe it was the reason for my performance problems. Now I’m a believer.

What was the solution? Simply to remove the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In. Well, not so simply, it turns out. NetCentrics, the developers of this plug-in, somehow don’t deem it necessary to provide a complete uninstaller for the plug-in. So, even if you uninstall it, the GTD Outlook Add-In leaves a bunch of cruft in your installation of Outlook. Luckily, a user on the David Allen forums posted a complete guide to actually removing the plug-in.

Note that once removed, my friend suggested that I run SCANPST (a utility that is installed with Microsoft Office, but not found on any menu - you have to search for it on your file system to find it), which repaired at least 11 corruptions within my PST file.

The end result is a far snappier installation of Outlook - so much so that I’m actually amazed. This is the performance I’ve been looking for.

So, do I still subscribe to the tenets of David Allen’s Getting Things Done workflow? Yep. But now I’m using version Clear Context 2.0’s Information Management System, which includes some very GTD-friendly functions like turning emails into tasks, and grouping information like emails, tasks and appointments by projects. Very cool. Note that Clear Context 2.0 is beta, but it’s good. Very good. Get it good.

And my Outlook is fast, finally!

(Chris, I’m sorry I didn’t follow your advice on this months ago!)

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