From the school of “you are your dog / handbag / desk / pantry” and so on, comes an article in the Wall Street Journal (for subscribers only, but reprinted in the Northwest Florida Daily News).

Titled “You are your inbox”, it claims that the makeup of your inbox reveals important insights about your inner life and character:

“If you keep your inbox full rather than empty, it may mean you keep your life cluttered in other ways,” says psychologist Dave Greenfield, who founded the Center for Internet Behavior in West Hartford, Conn. “Do you cling to the past? Do you have a lot of unfinished business in your life?”

On the other hand, if you obsessively clean your inbox every 10 minutes, you may be so quick to move on that you miss opportunities and ignore nuances. Or your compulsion for order may be sapping your energy from other endeavors, such as your family.

You then get a highly unethical but effective tip from Scott Stratten, some advice on being ruthless from Merlin Mann and a warning from Nancy Flynn (executive director of the ePolicy Institute and generous Hawk Wings supporter):

When you’re quick to respond with offers of help, “people use email to turn their crisis into your emergency,” she says.

Your inbox is an important source of self-knowledge, according to one expert:

Because “inboxes are metaphors for our lives,” Dr. Greenfield says, there’s no cure-all solution to inbox management. We’re all too different. But he believes an awareness of our inbox behavior can help us better understand other areas of our lives.

email, know thyself, productivity, information management, Merlin Mann, Nancy Flynn, inbox, tips

Chronos announced in an email today to registered users that StickyBrain has been discontinued and will be replaced by another of the company’s information management apps, SOHO Notes.

SOHO Notes is built from the same code base as StickyBrain but features three additional functions:

• SOHO Notes can synchronize notes between multiple computers using a .Mac account.
• SOHO Notes can access multiple note databases simultaneously.
• SOHO Notes is multi-user capable which means users can share notes with others over a network using the product’s client/server technology.

The two apps cost the same (USD 39.99) and Chronos is offering free transition to existing StickyBrain users.

According to the Vice President of Sales at Chronos, Jerry Halls, the move streamlines the company’s software catalogue:

SOHO Notes is like a big brother to StickyBrain—it does everything StickyBrain does plus more. In order to simplify our product line and bring more focus to our SOHO Series of products, we feel that now is a good time to move our users from StickyBrain to the more powerful SOHO Notes.

Earlier this year Hawk Wings was very impressed with Yojimbo, Bare Bones’ new information manager, and switched from StickyBrain.

It then watched with interest as Chronos appeared to incorporate many of Yojimbo’s features in a subsequent release of StickyBrain.

As a result of today’s change, Chronos now offers an information manager at almost the same price as Yojimbo, but with stronger multi-user and network features. yojimbo, stickybrain, information management, productivity, PIM, notes, snippets

Described by the developers as “iPhoto for PDFs”, kip offers tagging, sorting, searching and syncing with iDisk for your PDFs. Its scanning features also promise a way to centralise and organise all those bills, receipts, reports, and other bits of paper laying around the house.

Screenshots and more on kip’s features after the jump.

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