Yammer 109: Yammering Your Personal Journal

For the last several years I have kept my personal journal in a series of month-based Microsoft Word documents, with a naming convention of 08January.doc, 08 February.doc, etc.

I don’t always do the greatest job of keeping it updated, and of course it’s not searchable. If I want to remember when something happened that I had written about, I have little choice but to open each of the documents and search. And keeping it all in one document was unworkable; I had started with just one file, but found it necessary to later move to the monthly files.

With Yammer’s new Groups feature, I think I have a better solution. I’ve formed a group called Lee Aase’s Journal that is private and not listed in the company directory, and I’m not inviting anyone else to join (and therefore no one can request to join, either.) No one would know the group even existed if I hadn’t written this blog post.

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So in essence I have a time-stamped private journal that I can add to quickly and easily. Unlike Twitter, I’m not limited to 140 characters. And if I want to find a particular reflection, I can just search Yammer.

Here’s my first post:

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I’ve done some subsequent posts with my current weight, the time it took to run those two miles, and other tidbits of a more personal nature. I’m pretty transparent, but hey, there are limits to personal disclosure!

I’m just starting this “Yammering My Personal Journal” journey, but I think it’s going to be a great way to make journaling part of my daily activity. And not only journaling to get the thoughts out, but to time stamp them and make them easier to retrieve.

I’ve set my journal (and other Yammer groups) as one of my bookmarks in Safari, and I believe that will help me keep journaling front-and-center as a daily (if not more) activity.

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I’ll keep you posted as I develop more experience with Yammering to myself.

What do you think of this idea?

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