Document and Organizing Life using countless Telegram Groups
You probably have lots of information to keep track of, and if you’re a partner and parent, then it’s information about several people, updated by several people, and needs to be detailed and available right when you need it.
TL;DR: we use Telegram, and there have separate groups for each of us for:
- Medical: medical history, from unusual temperature to hospital records
- Education: structured learning milestones, from kindergarten to university
- Progress: life’s big and small accomplishments, anything done for the very first time
- Selfie: clear frontal face picture, every day, since birth if possible
- Food: overview of main meals, to keep track of variety or memorize especially significant meals
Additionally, we have several more groups which are just one of each. The main ones are:
- Daily Moment Snapshots: every day, a photo with detailed description of the major thing that happened that day, that will remind you of it even years later.
- Children Pictures: here we use Telegram’s channel rather than a group.
We have one shared with whole family, where we (parents) post and they (grandparents, uncles, etc) see it. A private one where we put what we want to save but not share. And third discussions one where grandparents post comments and their pictures with kids.
This should give you the general sense. We have many more, see more details below.
Use Telegram
Stop using WhatsApp (if you still are…)
First of all, why Telegram messenger, and not WhatsApp?
- Does not belong to a company (Facebook) that spies on you and wants to gather all your data for their use. WhatApp will even soon have ads.
- Saves your photos and files in the cloud, so they are always available, and not need to specifically backup.
- Available on computer without needing your phone connected or nearby. So if your phone is not near, or is broken, you still have full access.
- Has channels that enable you to publish content and not discuss in group (like sending kids’ photos to family).
So, move to Telegram already. And invite all your friends and family.
Important: for security, make sure you have two-step verification enabled, which means a password is required in addition to getting a code from a phone or another logged-in device.
Other alternatives I tried and didn’t like
You want to record information in the most simple way, least clicks, and no effort to organize.
Why not Evernote? Because cloud storage costs money (in Telegram it’s free and virtually unlimited), saving images right from camera or gallery isn’t trivial, and timestamped appending (i.e. add something now, with timestamp of now) isn’t straightforward.
Why not Google Docs or some other office suite? Because at the moment of documenting, the burden of going to another program and organizing and formatting will just make you pass.
Organize your information when you make it
Think of the information you want to keep, not as what you want to spend your time and energy keeping, but rather on what you need to minimize your time and energy retrieving.
Extreme case? If ever your child reaches the hospital, and the doctor asks to describe in detail, with timestamps and pictures and videos, everything that happened in the weeks prior.
Maybe you want to recall how you looked for the years since birth.
Your life is moving like crazy, and you don’t remember what you did for the last year. If only there was a way to be reminded how every day was special and unique and well spent.
Well, there is a way. If you put the effort in advance.
To keep track of all the above and more, my wife and I keep many shared Telegram groups, most for just the two of us, and they are always much more useful in retrospect.
Useful groups to have for each household member
Medical
Health comes first. Modern healthcare system is quite advanced and sophisticated, and if you come to the doctor with the right information, they can give you the best treatment. But when you come for the first visit in some condition, the doctor doesn’t anything relevant prior to your visit.
Keep your own Electronic Health Record, where you document everything that could be relevant to show a doctor — a lot before you know it’s relevant.
Got a headache? Sore throat? Strange new pain? Fever? Dizziness? Puking? Contracted muscle? Something unusual on the skin? Anything that doesn’t feel quite right? Write it down, take a picture, make a video, right there!
It only takes a second, and clears your memory to handle more important day to day issues. In most cases, it will pass in a couple of days, and you will forget all about it. But for that one time it continues and you go to the doctor about it, you will have an exact history of when anything unusual started, and you will avoid the Doctor’s “let’s wait a few more days and see how this evolves”.
Needless to say, also document your doctor’s notes and prescriptions, blood check results, imaging results (CT, MRI etc), pictures of medication boxes.
Education
We (parents) study in University or in online courses, and our kids in school or kindergarten. Each one of these has it’s own announcements, schedules, deadlines, diplomas, updates, and more.
Maybe you have a few kids. And you get updates in various channels (phone, messages, emails, in person, paper documents). Some are given to the child, some are given to one parent, some are to another.
Organize everything in one place, in an Education group for each person.
Progress
A life of accomplishment is paved in small but meaningful steps.
Your child breathe your first breath, grow your first tooth, walk your first step, speak your first word, wear your shirt by yourself for the first time, make your first joke, make your first friend, solve your first equation, build your first Lego set, play your first computer game, make your first very sophisticated logical conclusion, and so on and so forth.
As an adult and parent, you learn more advanced and sophisticated skills, whether as part of your own personal growth, or as part of handling your children better and answering their needs in such creative ways that only parents can.
Appreciate life, and everything that each of your accomplishes every day.
On a side note: if your child has a delay in any kind of expected progress for their age, by keeping track like this, you will be very easily answer the question of when (i.e. at what exact age) were they able to do something.
Selfie
We change every day. Some changes are very gradual, others are more sudden.
This is straightforward — each day make a clear front face face photo. You don’t notice how you change from day to day, but small changes accumulate and are highly visible in retrospect.
Food
For each, we have a Food group. For your picky children, it’s worth keeping tracking of which foods they are willing to eat. For adults, it may be helpful to maintain a diet, by looking out for how much we eat and what is the variety.
Career
This is just for your parents, who are so busy with keeping track of all the above. Career group is for planning and tracking the advancement of your career.
Keep track of news stories related to your current company or field. Plan your next career move, your growth path inside your company, your interview process to move to another company.
Useful groups to have for us together
For pictures of the kids, we have one shared private channel.
The key differences between channels and groups, that “new members can see the entire message history in a channel once they join”, and that there is control on who can post and who can just read (so only we send photos and videos there, but all grandparents and uncles can watch).
So all those keep track of very specific things. But what about keeping track of overall life? For that, we have one group, to which each of us post approximately once per day, and there we put a long description on each image.
This is the Daily Moment Snapshots group. Each day, we take a picture (on special days, can be two or three) that will remind us of that day. It’s like an index to our brain. We have memory of many details of many days, and these pictures are gateways to remember those days.
More groups to have if that’s your thing
We have several more groups, which are less active and maintained. They are low traffic (messages may be weeks apart), and each one keeps track of a certain area of interest. You may relate more to some than others.
Sports Achievements
To encourage each other to take a moment to do sports, we write here when we exercise. If you exercise regularly, write milestones and keep progress. If you don’t exercise at all, use this to remind each other to take a moment for it.
Their Quotes
Kids say the darnedest things. Here we keep track, usually in text but sometimes in video, of what ours say.
Places Guide
Pictures of opening hours signs and addresses of key places in the neighborhood, that is import for us to be familiar with. Post office, clinic, grocery, great parks.
If one of you discovers that the opening hours have changes, or finds a new cool place, here is the place to put it.
Movies to Watch
Remember before having kids, your could just go out to the movies? And now you have to schedule it, plan ahead, and go in specific hours.
Even if you want to watch it at home, you need to find a time between everything else there is, some more fun than others.
So here is the place to post IMDB links to new movies and discuss which to watch together, and plan when to do it.
Dreams
Usually dreams fade away as you wake up. Sometimes they suddenly disappear because you got woken up by your kid.
But for those special occasions when you wake up and you just remember the dream you had in vivid detail — this is the place to write down everything.
Family Health and Insurance
Keep track of which insurance you have, does it cover everything you need, do you have overlapping double insurance from different sources, how much does it cost each month.
Here put the quarterly reports from your insurance company, your talks with your insurance agent, and any relevant documents if you ever need to use the insurance.
Family Finance
Put your income and major household expenses (municipal, utility bills) here. Document gift cards, attach monthly credit card reports. Keep track of stocks, investments, mortgage and other loads.
Car
If you rent a car, take pictures of it for damage control, and attach all the documents and bills related to it.
If you own a car, keep track of when it needs treatment and annual checks, insurance payment, licenses etc.
You can also take a picture of the last place you parked, save videos from dash-cam, etc.
Trip Planning
Sometimes you want to go abroad, and you need to come up with a good location, find the best time, order flights and hotels. Some of these are more simple and straightforward, and some need a long discussion.
Keep your discussions about the trip here. It may take you weeks to plan, and the trip itself will be months away.
Rare dirty house pictures
You know how sometimes you come home and find something misplaced, or dirty? Maybe something got spilled on the floor, or maybe someone left a plate with food on the table instead of throwing the food in the trash and the empty plate in the sink. Or you could be renovating or organizing and piled your entire living room on the couch.
Those are small memorable moments that deserve a special place of their own. Years later, you will look back at it, and think — wow, one day, I was bothered by that.
Rare clean house pictures
On the other hand, sometimes you clean and organize and everything is just neat and in place. You want to marvel at your own creation, and cherish the memory before everyone returns home and mess it up again.
Warranties and Documents
Some expensive yet fragile things, like electronics and furniture, have a warranty for a few years — 3, sometimes 5, and in some cases even 10.
Let’s say your computer monitor breaks after 2.5 years. That’s a long time, you probably forgot where you bought it, but the warranty is for 3 years. If only you had the warranty note (scanned), you could see the warranty is still active and get it replaced for free.
You get the idea. :-)
