Forum Posts Feed
My Usage of PersonalBrain - Or how I manged to got (almost) cured from CRIMPING
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Feb 27, 2012 at 07:25 AM
Hi Daly,
I am referring to your post in this thread:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3805/10
Yes, I have been a PersonalBrain user for 13 years now with a break between 2001 and 2006 when the developer of PB stopped the further development of the personal edition. But luckily, they released v4 around 2005 or 2006 and continued to deliver a strong user support and continuous development by listening to the users.
These are the main reasons why I switched back to TheBrain (the new (old) name in v7) from ADM (sniff….) and Ultra Recall (a great tool, too):
- My visual thinking. Hierarchical structures are annoying me
- Open architecture: I don’t have to think much about structure in TheBrain. I just add childs and jumps where I think it fits
- Continuous support and communication with the users even you are not a multi-billion business. When you write to their support you get a reply
- Continuous development
- Availability and compatibility on Windows and on OSX
- Sync with the web, possibility to make brain accessible online and you can even make smaller changes online
- The metadata system (types, tags and new in v7: You can name links, define the direction and add notes to links)
- Integrated calendar and reminders
- The instant search field. Here you can find any thought you have added to your brain even you can’t remember the complete name
- Possibility to link to files, folders and websites
My system is pretty simple. It is a mix of a very simple GTD and my own experiences. First insight: I need two different status levels only. These are “Open” and “Closed”. That’s it. Further, don’t use the metadata system heavily just because I am too lazy to update all this stuff again and again.
What I do: I add tasks or projects as thoughts below the thought “Take action this Week”. Then I add the associated contacts as a jump to the task-thought. Then I link all necessary files to the task-thought, copy the title of the task-thought to the text editor where I keep a log of what I have done, what needs to be done or to create a sub-task list.
When a task/project is closed I link it with the thought “Closed” and unlink it from “Take action this Week”.
To plan the whole stuff, I have a thought named “Plan of Attack”. Here I add the tasks/projects to the text editor below just simple text titles:
- Now: What I am working on now
- Today: What I plan to do today
- Later: What I will to tomorrow or later
- Waiting: Where I am waiting for somebody else to do something for me
- Done: What has been done so far and when
The tasks/projects listed in this thought are mostly direct links to the corresponding thoughts. So I can quickly jump to the required thought and have all necessary files at my fingertips. Further, the “Plan of Attach” thought is very useful when I have my weekly projects updates with my boss. I just print it and take it into the meeting and I have the current status of my work in front of me. Because I am updating this thought on a daily basis, I know it my heart and don’t have to think a lot about what I have to say.
This is a rather rough overview. I you want to know more please don’t hesitate and ask.
All the best,
Dominik
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Feb 27, 2012 at 03:42 PM
Thanks for the run down on how you use theBrain, Dominick.
I too find theBrain very useful, though I have now switched to ConnectedText for recording most of my notes. Nevertheless, theBrain remains the “nerve center” (if you’ll pardon the pun) for most of my work.
What I like especially about theBrain is how each thought (Brain-speak for a topic or item in the brain) becomes the nucleus of that subject. Create a thought for a project and you can then associate it in a number of ways with information:
1. You can create child thoughts to contain information directly related to it.
2. You can create multiple parent thoughts, if the the project requires it.
3. You can create jump thoughts for mildly related items.
4. You can attach a photograph or a screen clipping.
5. You can attach URLs. (I now attach links to the notes I am keeping on the project in ConnectedText.)
6. You can attach any number of files: spreadsheets, word processing documents, PDFs, etc.
7. You can make any folder on your computer a virtual folder, so you can keep a project folder handy.
8. You can use the calendar to set date-related information.
9. You can use the built-in associated note to keep a log for the project.
10. You can associate tags and types, e.g. to mark a project as urgent, or done.
I agree, too, with Dominick about the search feature in theBrain… It is surprisingly quick and powerful.
The combination of ConnectedText and theBrain is proving to work really well for my needs, but I would not go so far as to say it has cured me of CRIMP.
Steve Z.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Feb 27, 2012 at 08:21 PM
TheBrain is indeed brilliant for personal use, but its competitive advantage ends more or less when you want to collaborate. I recently asked for more info on TeamBrain http://www.thebrain.com/products/teambrain/ which seemed liked the answer to my collaboration blues. I received the following re pricing: “After trial, cost is $299.95 per person annually. This includes a license for PersonalBrain Pro and all software upgrades are free. This is our current beta price, next month once we release officially, the cost will increase to $349.95.”
There’s no way my SME can justify such a cost. So the search continues. After years of CRIMPing for the ideal tool in terms of functionality, I am now willing to give up a lot of that (and you usually do give up a lot when moving from software to webware) in exchange for the ability to collaborate.
Posted by moritz
Feb 28, 2012 at 02:51 AM
I am sympathetic to the price point because of the cost of running the service; that typically only gets cheap if you can get to a (fairly large) scale - think Amazon, Microsoft, Google ...
My issue with the Brain cloud service is that I don’t trust the data encryption approach. Ideally, data would never get decrypted on the server side, only through a password on the client. That would provide a relative measure of security.
Given convenience features such as the web UI for webbrain, as far as I understand decryption does happen to some extent on the server / in the cloud service.
Not good enough for sensitive business information, actually a bit of irony here: The more strategic and “important” (strategic) your use of the Brain becomes, the less likely you are going to find the cloud storage provisions to be acceptable.
This issue is quite common and affects a lot of similar services.
Will continue to use Windows Live Mesh peer to peer sync going forward ...
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>TheBrain is indeed brilliant for personal use, but its competitive advantage ends
>more or less when you want to collaborate. I recently asked for more info on TeamBrain
>http://www.thebrain.com/products/teambrain/ which seemed liked the answer to my
>collaboration blues. I received the following re pricing: “After trial, cost is
>$299.95 per person annually. This includes a license for PersonalBrain Pro and all
>software upgrades are free. This is our current beta price, next month once we release
>officially, the cost will increase to $349.95.”
>
>There’s no way my SME can justify
>such a cost. So the search continues. After years of CRIMPing for the ideal tool in
>terms of functionality, I am now willing to give up a lot of that (and you usually do give
>up a lot when moving from software to webware) in exchange for the ability to
>collaborate.
>
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Feb 29, 2012 at 03:23 PM
Dominik, thank you indeed for your comprehensive overview of how you use Personal Brain.
Daly