Gmail is my private micro-journal too as well as my GTD system
I keep thinking of alternate uses for Gmail. The combinations of tags, stars, archiving, threaded conversation, filter rules, and the power of email makes it perfect for me to use as my GTD system. But I am increasingly using gmail for something else, my micro-journal. I love the idea of micro-journaling little thoughts and ideas related to multiple threads always running in my life. I don’t like to statically define these threads too much, or projects. There are some journaling programs out there like Journler and Evernote but Gmail beats them for me.
- Gmail has a rock solid archive and memory. When it comes to tasks, emails, and thoughts, I might be anal but I want everything in one place. I can’t trust Journler xml files or a small company like Evernote. I want a rock solid searchable archive. The Gmail archive solves the information visibility issue like nothing else. I don’t want to see all the information in my world structured, call me weird. Instead I want an information system to mimic my brain, I just archive information and call it up at will with a global search mechanism that my brain implements. With 1 or 2 associations I usually can pull something up in my brain and if not there 1 or 2 quick searches through gmail does the same trick. I rarely tag things in Gmail. Tags are for other people, when sharing things like in del.icio.us. But for me, I search on keywords that I remember, nothing more, nothing less. It’s the principle of Google search that we all have embraced applied to personal productivity.
- Email already nicely chunks, tumbles, creates micro pieces well enough thank-you. Thoughts, ideas, todos pop-up as you work and all GTD software systems like Things, iGTD, and OmniFocus as well as most of the best journaling programs recognize this by having quick entry forms, ability to easily turn emails into tasks and so forth. But email itself needs no other system on top of it. When I think of something to micro-journal what do I do? I could either Twitter it, Facebook it, or keep it in a private archive. The easiest way to do the latter, simply send myself an email. E.g. the subject would say: “Journal - God, that bitch drove me crazy in that meeting”. Not something you want to facebook but something you might want to to journal. A simple search on journal pulls up all your entries sorted by date. You can reply to past entries to add more info and context as well. Yes entries aren’t editable but that isn’t really so important. It’s always easy to pull up an email client, whether on the desktop or on your iphone. I mean a twitter grid, an evernote grid, a journler calendar whatever doesn’t really offer all the much over email.
- Email supports attachments. So that is cool if you want them. Now here is one thing where Evernote is cool, it searches through images for words, I wish Gmail did that. And it has a cool image capture tool that works with your mac so your images don’t look backwards. So I use Evernote but simply email my note with the pd attachment of the bill/notice/napkin whatever that Evernote created to gmail, ha.
- You can use Gmail labels to keep track of threads in your life. - You know if you need them. Emails sent to yourself can be automatically categorized with some rules into labels or you can tag them yourselves. Comes in handy for keeping separate journals on finances, your daughter, your work, whatever. I mean you can always simply just use the word “journal” and then search for another word in the journal to separate your journal as well. Tagging takes place as you type every word after all.
- Simple-unified interface that you can access from about anywhere. - Can’t say this for Journler, Mac Journal, although you can for Evernote.
- Your email is already a journal of your life. - You self document your life as you describe events via email with your friends. Why not simply email yourself stuff you don’t want to tell others.
- Gmail archives and makes chats searchable too if you use Gchat - Gmail also stores chats and makes them searchable. I tell a lot of stories via chat so this is where a lot of my life is documented.
- Gmail integrates with Google Docs and Calendar and Reader - yeah, yeah, but I love all this stuff because I feel like everything is one place.
So the more I use Gmail, the more I don’t want to use other productivity tools except as an enhancement to Gmail for features it lack. For e.g., in Gmail there is no way to set notifications on tasks. If you want to be reminded right before something other than an event on your Google cal, there is no way that Gmail will alert you, but Sandy can. Just fire her off an email and she will send back an email, how convenient. So you think of a task that you need a reminder for, just send it to sandy instead of yourself and she will reply back with an email. Then direct all Sandy emails to your follow-up label (your inbox after the Gmail inbox where all your tasks should go).
