Inspired by a post on stevepavlina.com, I decided to come up with a few 30-day trial goals for the month of March. After 30 days, I’ll re-evaluate whether I want to keep these as routines / habits going forward. I’ve been really trying to form good habits in my life overall lately, and so I wanted to pick goals that I could do every day and install some positive habits in my life. I decided that more than 5 would be overwhelming. I brainstormed a list of 12 and then combined, edited, and cut it down to the following 5 goals. For the next 30 days, I’ll complete each of these every single day, weekends included.
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So today I was pondering electronic journaling, after being prompted by this post on stevepavlina.com. However, I move between multiple computers all the time and installed software doesn’t seem like a good fit for me. I want something more private than a blog, and preferably with decent search capabilities. That’s when it hit me: Gmail!

Here’s what I did:

1. Setup a new contact with the name “journal” and my email address + journal. Gmail allows you to add keywords to your email address. For example, if your email is sam@gmail.com, you can also receive email at sam+food@gmail.com. In this case, you’ll be receiving your journal entries at sam+journal@gmail.com.
2. Setup a new filter that looks for all messages to sam+journal@gmail.com and then applies the (new) label “journal” and archives the message.

That’s it! Now I simply go into Gmail and compose a new message to journal. I can search these journals with Gmail’s fantastic search capabilities or even apply other labels as well. An added benefit to this system is that I can journal from anything that can send email, such as a handheld, simply by composing my message to sam+journal@gmail.com.

Simple, but effective.

An actual announcement I heard yesterday in English only on Walgreens PA:

“Walgreens is your language-friendly pharmacy. Have your questions
answered and your prescription explained in your language. If no
one at your local Walgreens speaks your preferred language, we’ll
immediately call a licensed Walgreens pharmacist who does.”

“Sometimes there is so much beauty in the world, I can’t even stand it, and it feels like my heart is going to burst.”

-American Beauty

San Francisco by the Bay II by ~TheDarkKnight78 on deviantART