Use Gmail to learn calmly

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Newsletters are back on fire as brilliant educators. But our over-stuffed inbox doesn't handle them well. They either interrupt our deep work, or never get opened if they go into Promotions. Either way, we're mentally poorer for not making use of what they can teach us.

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Remember: Breef's purpose is to reframe Gmail around your goals, prioritizing them and automatically surfacing their emails that need action, to unblock your path to success.

Make learning an intentional daily activity

Our brains love to focus on one thing at once. The impact on your brain of rapidly changing focus has been likened to being stoned.

Not surprisingly, the act of learning doesn’t go well when the brain is being hammered.

Try making learning a daily activity, with a recurring slot in your calendar. Give yourself the space to make ideas stick.

Organize your trusted sources into one place

To help you focus, Breef combines your subscriptions into Topics. E.g. “Marketing Case Studies”, “Investment Ideas”.

It then presents the topic on the sidebar, so when you’re ready, you can go through it in one go.

Glide to find their brilliant insights

Breef has a Triage view, that’s like an Instagram feed - for your email.

Just scroll through in one long read.

Your eye will naturally spot the insightful gems that catch its interest.

Curate knowledge by summarizing it into notes

Once you find insights, the next question is how do you make them stick?

Breef has a special area in Gmail called your Knowledge Base. (It’s really just a regular Gmail label.)

When you’re doing a scrolling Triage, or in any regular email view, you can click Save to make Breef add it to your Knowledge Base.

You’ll be prompted to summarize the key points into a note. It means next time you revisit the long email, you don’t have to re-read the whole thing: just instantly recap what you found valuable.

Roadmap

Discover fresh new subscriptions
Experts are starting new newsletters every week. People who can really help your career. But they’re nearly impossible to find - there’s no App Store for newsletters.
The plan is to give you recommendations to expand your existing Topics of interest. E.g. if in your topic you already have Bob and Rita for their investment tips, but Breef knows Sue has hottest ideas in town, it’ll suggest you add Sue to your Topic.