One of the most powerful features that TheBrain offers is Instant Activate. Just type in the first couple letters and up pops the Thoughts you need. Then simply click on that Thought and you’re exactly where you need to be in seconds. The power of this feature should not be underestimated. It gives you the ability to get to any Thought and its related content in seconds. This is especially critical for users juggling multiple projects or tasks. Anyone who needs to shift contexts, respond and bring up information quickly will love this feature.
Instant Activate
Just type in the first couple letters of what you need and a list of your Thoughts appear.
Click on the Thought and get your information instantly.
Why I Love this Feature and How It Saves Me Time
In my typical day I will activate 20 to 30 different Thoughts. Everything from a vendor I need to call, a proposal I need to reference, to a flight itinerary for a trip. With Instant Activate your TheBrain is like a remote control for your mind, able to pull up what you need in seconds. Your Brain moves to the right Thought, you get the information you need and see related connections. So in addition to fast information access you get this “ah ha” feeling because in addition to getting the detail you need by visualizing and seeing how this information fits into everything else you gain a sense of control, an immediate visual briefing on how everything fits.
How Is Instant Activate Different from Desktop Search?
With TheBrain all your Thoughts are only a few keystrokes away and appear without the delay and long list of results typical of a standard search. Note that TheBrain does index your documents and you can do a full search by hitting the search button. However, this article is talking about Instant Activate that offers not even a second of delay. As you move from one topic to the next, this time savings make a huge difference in your day.
In fact, even if you are not into visualization I recommend you store mission critical documents in your TheBrain because you can get to your Thoughts so quickly.
Setting Up Your Brain to Maximize Instant Activate
To take advantage of the Instant Activate that TheBrain offers I suggest you do a little infochunking with your Thoughts and Notes. Infochunking is the art of breaking down or deconstructing information into all essential components. We also call this cognitive indexing. Why does infochunking optimize Instant Activate? Because creating Thoughts on things you need to access lets you get really specific with your activations. If all your ideas are in one document (not visually indexed) you can’t activate key concepts on their own.
Get started by creating Thoughts for all key ideas or persons that warrant thinking or action. For instance, let’s say you have some key metrics and sales figures that you need to reference that are in a word document. Create a Thought for this information and cut and paste these key points into notes under that Thought. This way when you activate that specific idea you will see this information immediately without having to wait for Word to open the document and then scroll to find this information embedded within the file.
This works great for email message also. I don’t think I’m the only one who gets long winded messages with only two or three ideas or sentences in them that you really need. When using Outlook, you can drag and drop the email message into your TheBrain and the full message will appear in notes. From there you can delete irrelevant content and simply have just the paragraph you need with a key project requirement etc. With this approach sometimes it may not even be worth dragging in the full email or file, if all you need to access is a key metric or bullet and the idea itself. This optimized view enables you to laser in on the information that is most important during your busy day.
This cognitive indexing is critical for:
- Podcasters who need to remember a variety of subjects and issues throughout their broadcast. Their TheBrain becomes their dynamic teleprompter.
- Sales or client services managers who need to pull up information or recall details as soon as their client or prospect calls.
- Business owners and executives who are managing wide ranging tasks and need to find the details immediately.
- Technicians and Engineers who are troubleshooting complex products or issues. Each step of their solution can be broken down in TheBrain so they can hone in on a particular part or component of the process.
- Project Managers dealing with multiple variables and requirements. All phases of a project can be broken down so instant recall is possible for any aspect of a project.
Remember with TheBrain there is no limit to the number of Thoughts or ideas you can add. So you can literally create your digital memory for anything and everything. This is unbelievably useful. You will be able to find and see the smallest details that would otherwise be forgotten. For instance last month I was looking for a reasonably priced restaurant in Beverly Hills. So I simply activated Beverly Hills in my Brain and there were several Thoughts on restaurants that met my needs. Now I hadn’t been to this area in my Brain for awhile, but it was sure handy! This is the way it goes when you create a network of information on stuff that interests you and things that you need to get done. Like you wetbrain, when it comes time for retrieval it’s all right there, when you need it.
