| Gmail as a Second Brain |
| Published on 01/17/05 at 11:45:11 GMT by Norbert |
| |
 Information Management:
How to use Gmail as your second brain
By Adam Boettiger - adam@digitalocean.cc
I don't know about you, but I subscribe to quite a few email discussion lists and ezines/newsletters. I've been online since 1992 and through the years have found email discussion lists to be an invaluable source of topic-specific help, tips and information.
But information is useless unless it meets at least two criteria:
1. You can easily and quickly store it
2. You can easily and quickly retrieve it at the time when you need it
We are all overloaded with email and information, however there are many nuggets of gold that we see every day that we wish we could file away in our brain somewhere. You may subscribe to a discussion list and receive 10 posts a day from it, with maybe 2 being relevant to your problems, and of those two messages, maybe there is only one single paragraph and URL in each that you find useful or want to store for later retrieval.
There are plenty of desktop search applications. One particularly good one for PC users is called Copernic and can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.copernic.com/. Once it indexes your hard drive the first time it is an incredibly useful and fast application for locating information.
If, for example, you wanted to store a paragraph and URL for a resource you saw in a newsletter or discussion list, you might take a text editor like TextPad http://www.textpad.com/ or BBEdit http://www.barebones.com/ (Mac users) and highlight, copy and paste, saving the snippet into a .txt text file in a folder named "My Brain" on your hard drive. Once Copernic indexes your brain, information retrieval becomes incredibly easy.
Another method you can use to store and retrieve snippets of information, knowledge, experience and resources can be done through a separate web email account. I tend to move around a lot from computer to computer so this is the preferred method that I use:
1. Get a gmail account. This is Google's new web email service. Really any web email account will work, but in my opinion Gmail is the best suited for this particular purpose because of its superior search capabilities and the ability to use Filters, Categories and Labels to segment your data by category or label.
Even if you currently have a web email or gmail account, create a new one. If available, try to get an address like "yourfirstname.brain@gmail.com". This is an account that you will use solely for information storage. Don't give the address out to anyone and do not use it or list it publicly, but DO add it to your email address book. Call it something like "My Brain".
2. Use Outlook or the Palm Desktop client (free @ http://www.palmone.com/us/software/palm/) and set a monthly recurring appointment with alarm to remind yourself to check your brain. Logging in monthly keeps the account active and it's a good way to remind yourself to use it.
3. USE YOUR NEW 1 gigabyte BRAIN!
When you see a portion of information you want to save from an email discussion list posting or ezine, highlight it, copy it, paste it into an email message and SEND IT TO YOUR BRAIN!
REMEMBER: It isn't necessary to forward the entire message. If you just forward or store the portion that is relevant or useful to you, when it comes time to review or retrieve it you'll find it that much faster with less noise.
TIP: Before you send a message to Your Brain, trim it down, add some notes that will help you later, add some keywords to the bottom of it that you might search under to find it or that you want it to come up in search results under.
TIP: Use gmail's Label and Filter features to create sortable categories.
EXAMPLE: Say you are one of those folks (like me) who gets many ideas throughout the day. If you're like me, if you don't write it down or record it, the idea is gone in 5 minutes or so and replaced with a new one. In gmail, first create a Label called "Ideas". Next create a Filter that watches for the word "idea" in the subject line of incoming messages and then applies the "Ideas" Label to them. Then, every time you have a new idea, just email it to Your Brain, and make sure you include "Idea" in the Subject line.
TIP: ADD YOUR DESCRIPTIVE AND RELEVANT SUBJECT LINE!
Having a good subject line will allow you to just scan the subject lines and not have to open each message in Your Brain when looking for something later on.
Gmail offers a full gigabyte of storage, so Your Brain can grow to be quite large and even include file attachments, photos, documents, PDF reports, ebooks and more. Get creative!
Read more and the UPDATE at http://www.digitalocean.cc/archives/information_management.html
About the Author
Adam Boettiger has been involved with the Internet, Web and email since 1995 and is currently Director of Business Development for Babcock & Jenkins www.bnj.com, a full-service direct and relationship marketing agency based in Portland, Oregon that helps companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Hollywood Video, Adobe, Trendwest and others generate sales leads, communicate with existing customers and generate new customers through integrated marketing strategies that reduce acquisition costs and boost profits.
Phone: (503) 748-3502 / email: adam@digitalocean.cc
Reprinted with permission from Adam Boettiger's Digital Ocean Newsletter. (Copyright 2004, Adam Boettiger, DigitalOcean.cc.) To subscribe to Adam's free newsletter, visit http://www.digitalocean.cc/ .
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