Gmail Journal
I was recently inspired by a post that Merlin Mann had created on 43 Folders about using a web based mail account as a “punching bag“. Remembering an old skool Gmail tip about keeping notes in your mail account, I thought these two ideas could combine nicely to allow you to use Gmail as a personal journal. I signed up for a new Gmail account called “aw.journal”. (Please don’t mail it, I don’t intend to use it for anything other than what I describe below.)
I mapped out quickly what I wanted my categories to be:
- Blessings: This is a tip I cribbed from the amazing book “Learned Optimism”, by Martin Seligman. Are you upset about something? Are you just feeling down in general? As fast as you can, write out a list of a couple-dozen things that are really great. You’ll feel way more positive
- Flame: I refer you back to the magnificent 43 Folders
- Gripes: negative journal postings. Keep these separate. Why dwell on the negative?
- Ideas: I’m going to be posting on my idea-generating games later. For now, use this whenever you think of something, however ridiculous, that you could refactor down the road into that killer project
- Life: it ain’t work
- Links: some stuff I don’t want to check out at the office, and I don’t want to post to del.icio.us in “_read”. There are all kinds of reasons for this, like it may be NSFW, it might be loud, it might be something you don’t want to push traffic too. That stuff goes here.
- Notes: doesn’t need much explanation. Snippets of stuff I want to keep on hand, but don’t need to go into a more formal knowledgebase
- Site: the birthing place of blog posts. Certainly not getting enough traffic these days, but that will change
- Work: it ain’t life
- YayMe: anytime I get a complimentary message, it gets forwarded to this file
The next step was to create a spreadsheet in OpenOffice. This is my list of contacts for my journal categories. I used three headings: First Name, Last Name, Email. If you need more info, you can follow Google’s instructions.
All these new contacts have the first name “Journal”. As soon as I type “Jo” in the “To” line of a new Gmail message, I see a list of all my Journal categories. Last names correspond with the categories I defined above. Email addresses are “aw.journal+category at gmail.com” (obviously I’ve mucked with this to try and throw off mail harvestors.) Mail servers ignore everything between “+” and “@”, delivering to the username that preceeds the “+”. (Bonus points: clever application of the “+” can help you figure out who’s sending you spam. But again: that’s another story.) I saved this spreadsheet out as a CSV, but left the file open. Its so much easier to copy and paste from this spreadsheet than trying to remember all my categories. I imported the CSV into my contacts, following the instructions at Gmail.
I headed over to the aw.journal account, and created labels and filters for all my categories. You can follow the instructions from Jim’s Gmail Tip, but replace “Notes” with your categories.
… And done. That’s all there is to it. Now anytime you need to write in your journal, pop open a new message in your Gmail account, and type to your hearts content.
The nice thing about this is you’re kind of doing Google a favour. In the brief time I’ve been toying with this hack, I’ve found more keyword ads and related sites I’ve wanted to click on than at any time using my regular account.
The GTD nerds in my readership may already be seeing another application. There’s nothing keeping you from setting up a mail account, and using your contexts for categories. In fact, I’ve been considering creating an “Inbox” category to hold my unsorted to-dos.
UPDATE: In my original post, I neglected to credit the site The Slacker Manager. It was this site that gave me the “Yay Me” idea.
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[...] Gmail Journal Filed under: Internet — Dave @ 9:46 am
[...] to use there Gmail account. From file storage, Gmail being their second brain, and then a Journal of sorts. These are all great ideas, but I don’t need file storage, and from wha [...]
Gmail as a journal Weblog White’s at Henry Lane posts about using Gmail as a repository of personal information categorized by Gmail labels. Set up Gmail labels (like “notes,” “ideas,” “links,” “work”) and create filters that automatically label inbound emails t…
Very interesting. Props!
great post, thx :P
Gmail Journal Here’s a neat article about using gmail as a journal. I’ve been doing this somewhat already. I already have a category set up in gmail for links I want to look at later, and I also put links I’d like to blog about in that category. I’ve got a se…
Brilliant use of a simple tool, have blogged the idea with a link to you.
I use it as a chatbox :) Get a few friends together with a gmail account. E-Mail all of ‘m with 1 mail (think of a nice subject fitting the day for example) and everybody replies using the Reply to All button.. this way you can stack up to 150 mails in 1 subject untill gmail seems to make mistakes.. anyway, 150 is good enough for a day worth of fun chats through out the day between some friends who work / study at different locations. We usually share news, vids from presentations at company’s and funny stuff this way :)
Inspired by couple of projects, I’ve built & made available for download a .Net C#/VB.NET project which acts as a blog front with a back end supported by Ggmail. Check it out: http://www.matrixai.com
When I send an e-mail to address+category@gmail.com it goes directly to my inbox, but does not get “labeled” as you say.
Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks for the comments, everyone!
Andy, have you set up the filters like Jim described in his “notes” tip? I didn’t go into detail on that here, since he’d already done a much better job than I.
Go hit Jim’s site, and follow his directions. If you’re still having trouble, post back here and we’ll see if we can help you.
a.
Great idea! I just set it up myself. I did run into one interesting little ditty though; sending something to the address with +links added ended up getting categorized as Life. Yes, I double checked the filters, but that’s the way it went for me. I simply changed the reference to +urls, named the tag “URLs”, and now all is well.
Using Gmail as a journal This is a great idea: I was recently inspired by a post that Merlin Mann had created on 43 Folders about using a web based mail account as a ìpunching bagì. Remembering an old skool Gmail tip about keeping notes…
Thor: that’s quite odd. I double checked, and it doesn’t seem to be happening for me at all. Good on you for working around it, though.
A funny thing happened while importing the csv file…
The email tool that I use most often is Thunderbird, so I did all of my testing from there. I didn’t notice until just a little bit ago that for some reason Thunderbird is not importing the csv file I created from Open Office properly, although all of the other tools I have imported it just fine. So, what had happened when I originally did the test was that the email address I was sending to had the nickname for the “Links” tag, but was actually sending to the “Life” tag address.
Most interesting. And anyway, thanks for pulling such a good idea together….
Use Gmail as Online Journal Got this fantastic tip from White’s of Henry Lane. To paraphrase, …
gmail accounts When Gmail first launched I slavered all over myself to get one. In fact, the guy I’m dating was the one who finally gave me one – as a gift, on our second date. This is the mating dance, apparently, for geeks when a new, limited tech toy comes to mar…
[...] Tech Stuff Using Google’s gmail as a journal? Interesting idea that has been described at the White’s of Henry Lane site, itself pulli [...]
[...] l Filed under: Computers — Larry @ 10:15 pm I found this bit about making a Gmail Journal, but I never posted it. I figured I would go ahead and post it be [...]
If you want to be able to edit your Gmail notes in the future, use Save Draft instead of Send. Details here: http://jonaquino.blogspot.com/2005/03/gmail-as-notepad-of-web.html
It’s a great idea. As for me, I’m using a Gmail account to save photos I took using my cellphone.
As for the Gmail invites, I give them away here.
Great Idea! It revolutionizes the “Use Gmail as 2nd Brain”:http://www.digitaloceanonline.com/mt/archives/how_to_use_gmail_as_your_second_brain.html.
I’ve found it helpful to add an:
Advice label where I store snippets of Advise or tips that people have given me/or i’ve collected
Goals keep track of my goals although “43 Things”:http://www.43things.com is more fun
also check out the “GTD manner”:http://saw.themurdaughs.com/gtd-with-gmail-whitepaper/