It is time I reclaim my time and inbox.
Hi my name is Alan and I am an Xobni addict. I am clean now for two days. I am thrilled with the power my computer has gained since I’ve broken my habit. I am amazed at how fast Outlook really is. I had no idea that Microsoft’s Social Connector can do almost everything Xobni did without bringing my computer to a crawl. I am thrilled with how much more productive I am now.
For a long time I was a huge advocate and user of Xobni. Inbox spelled backwards, Xobni is an Outlook plugin that indexes all of your mail and correlates it with social network information. It offers fast search of your inbox and give you great insight into the people who you exchange email with. I have written about Xobni over the years and was a Xobni plus user.
The funny thing was that whenever I would install it on someone else’s machine for them they would stop using it shortly thereafter, claiming it slowed their machine down too much. I used to think it was them and their machines, not Xobni. Yeah, sure, you took a performance hit with Xobni, but wasn’t it worth it for all of the great, automagical stuff it did for you?
Over the years I just took it as a given that Outlook was slow and that you could only manage so many emails in a given period. I began to think it was normal that after you hit compose and try to type in an email address you went over to the web and gave it some time to auto-fill the address. I thought it was normal that Outlook often displayed the warning message from Microsoft to restart the program or wait for it to finish. All of this and more became normal for me as I was addicted to the Xobni crack of being able to see a history of all the emails I had with that person, of finding contacts and seeing social network connections.
Last week was a busy week for me. I had a lot of emails to handle. Every day I was coming home and realizing that I was not being productive enough. I was not getting out everything I needed to. I blamed my phone, my wife, my kids. I blamed Outlook. But I would never blame Xobni.
Finally, on Monday I found it impossible to get two emails done in 20 minutes. I had enough. I took the almost unthinkable and disabled Xobni just to see how much of a hit it was really putting on the machine. I was flabbergasted! My machine sprung to life. I was banging out emails two at a time (little Godfather reference there, extra points for anyone who comments what scene it was from). The fog began to lift and I realized I had to throw this monkey off my back.
Yesterday, I installed Microsoft’s Social Connector, which I had disabled, thinking it could never be as good as Xobni. You know what? It’s better. It gave me just about everything Xobni did without the wait. Without turning my machine into a big hourglass. Why had I tortured myself all of these years?
So I am two days clean and loving life. My email activity is up. In fact, I swear my computer in general is acting faster. I have taken the first step and I don’t plan on going back.
What about you? What old computing habits do you have that may be slowing you down? Is it time to re-examine what tools and programs you are using? It may just be that you are wasting time that you don’t even realize.
