How to use Gmail as an idea incubator

As many of us do, I long ago started using an "ideas file" where I would store snippets of information about projects I want to undertake or ideas for articles and other thoughts. Aside from the obvious fact that I can't work on everything at once, some ideas are only seeds and may need time or additional information before they can germinate, so files like this make sense.

Many of my ideas are of the type that will need additional work, especially when they are article ideas. I may think of something that is just a single sentence: it might just be a "why" or "how" question that I don't even have an answer to. It might need research to be fleshed out or I might just need more time to think about it myself.

It also may be that I come across related ideas while reading or web surfing. In those cases, an idea in the file may be added to because of my accidental finds.

The idea file works well, but recently I started using Gmail as an idea incubator and have found that it offers significant advantages over word processing or text files for this sort of task.

The Gmail Idea Garden

There are several features of Gmail are all things that I find very useful in my "idea gardening". The garden analogy really is useful here: a seed of an idea is nurtured, it grows and someday you reap the harvest.

Let's see how each of these helps me.

From seed to harvest

The seed might just be a random thought. It may have been triggered by something I read or came across while surfing. Every modern browser has some way to email a link to a page you are looking at and even when I was still using the "file" method, I'd often email a page to myself and later transfer it to a file.

I also started using Gmail when I'd have those "out of the blue" ideas. If I was anywhere near a computer, I'd send myself a quick email outlining my thoughts.

It was actually this that gave me the idea to start using Gmail. Why transfer the idea to a file? There it was already in Gmail - easy to find (Gmail has powerful search capability) and easy to attach pictures or even other documents.

Labels

Gmail allows you to put multiple labels on each email message. I label each of my ideas with "A. Ideas".

The leading "A" is to keep the these labels easy to find. The Red arrow points to a link I can click on to bring up all emails that I have labeled this way. If I then want to work on those that I have also labeled "gmail incubator", I just click on that label on any of the emails I see and then I will only see that specific subset, but the "A. Ideas" label is what gives me quick access to everything that is in progress.

Rules

If I know I will be doing a lot of work on a particular idea, I might even set up a Gmail rule to make the labeling process automatic. Gmail calls these "Filters" and you create them in settings.

Here I have created a filter that adds the label "gmail incubator" to any email that has that as its subject. If I create another filter that adds "A. Ideas", any email I send with that subject will automatically get both labels.

Obviously I only bother with this if I plan to be working on an idea for an extended period or if I know I will be sending many separate messages about it.

Conversations

If I choose a particular email and hit "Reply", of course I am replying to myself. This has another useful effect, however.

When you reply to an email and do not change the subject, the reply inherits the labels of the original and will be grouped together into what Gmail calls a "conversation". This makes it very easy to see several ideas all expanded at the same time or collapse them to get an overall view. You can see this in the pictures at right.

Notice the label pointing at "Show Trimmed Content" in the second picture. Clicking on that will expand the view of that particular message and it can be quickly returned to its trimmed state just as easily. This is helpful as I am reviewing ideas.

Unfortunately, I can't rearrange the order of my thoughts. That's where the "Drafts" feature of Gmail becomes useful.

Drafts: Almost ready to harvest

As I accumulate ideas, pictures and links, I will eventually reach the point where I want to start putting things together in a moe final form. I could switch to a word processor at this point, but I really don't need to.

Until I hit "Send", Gmail stores any email or reply in a "Drafts" state. I can leave it like that indefinitely: I have drafts that are years old. I can return to them and continue editing at any time, shifting things around as I like.

If I have been working on an idea as a series of "Replies", each reply incudes everything from every previous reply, so it is easy to cut and paste things to rearrange my thoughts into a more final form. This video shows me working on a Draft.