Welcome to our new blog, “In a Nutshell.”  In this thrice-weekly online diary, I'll post many tips, ideas, essays, useful resources, and other information that you might find useful for increasing your knowledge and awareness of Microsoft SQL Server.  Other pet topics of mine will also come up from time to time as well, such as:

• My job at Quest Software as the director of technology for our SQL Server product line (http://www.quest.com)
• My main avenue of community services as the President of the Professional Association for SQL Server (http://www.sqlpass.org)
• My primary hobby of authoring technical books and articles

With that said, here's a little tidbit I learned just recently that has helped my productivity ratchet up a notch.  When it comes to email, I’ve encountered two basic kinds of people: pilers and filers.  Pilers tend to have HUGE inboxes with hundreds of emails.  They keep anything important in the inbox and throw away anything that isn’t absolutely necessary.  Filers, on the other hand, like to keep their inboxes small and tidy, and they don’t like to throw anything away.  Consequently, the filers create lots of folders where they store old messages after dealing with them upon their arrival in the inbox.

However, a big problem for both filers and pilers is that it gets harder and harder over time to find that truly important email.  Well, it turns out that the solution is at hand.  It’s a tool called Lookout – a lightning-fast desktop search tool that plugs right in to Outlook.  It proved its value within an hour of installation by providing the fastest and easiest searches across my many Outlook folders (yes, I’m a filer) that I’ve ever experienced.  You can download your own copy at:

Let me know how Lookout has worked for you and if you have any other useful tips for improving your daily productivity.  Enjoy!