Imagine this: it’s Monday morning.
You have a team meeting to start the day, where you receive status updates and action items.
You take a quick break to scroll through LinkedIn and see a post that gives you inspiration for something you’re working on.
You remember a request from a coworker last Friday that you forgot to follow up on.
Suddenly, you have a lot of information fighting for attention in your mind, and maybe you feel stressed trying to balance it all so nothing falls through the cracks. And it’s only 10:30 in the morning!
You might have heard of the concept of building a “second brain,” or a system that helps you manage the vast amount of information you take in every day so you can be more productive and ease the pressure on your memory.
Although the concept of organizing your life is nothing new, this phrasing became popular because of Tiago Forte’s 2022 book “Building a Second Brain.”
In your personal life, you might choose ways of managing information that are optimized for the mobile experience, since that’s how many of us stay connected every day.
But at work—especially if your team already uses Atlassian products to manage projects and workflows—Confluence can be the perfect tool for building your “second brain.”
You might be thinking, “But I don’t want my colleagues to be able to see all my notes and ideas before I’m ready to share them!” That’s where your personal space comes into play.
Every Confluence user can create a personal space that is accessible only to them (unless they choose to make content public), and you can build yours up in a way that helps you take control of the information you consume every day so that endless information flow doesn’t end up taking control of you. In this blog, we’ll show you how.
What is a Personal Space and How Do I Set Mine Up?
In Confluence, a personal space is a place for you to store your individual notes and ideas, either for your own reference or to work on independently until you are ready to move the content into a shared space and get your team’s feedback.
Teams often use Confluence spaces to organize their work into categories that make information easy to find and access. A personal space gives you a place for things that don’t quite fit into the team space but allows you to keep track of your ideas in the same tool.
A personal space is created for you automatically if your Confluence admin has enabled that setting, but even if they haven’t, you can still create one on your own.
To find your personal space, click your profile icon in the top right corner of your screen in Confluence (the icon will have your initials or your profile picture). Then, click Personal Space in the drop-down menu.
If you don’t already have one, you should see an option in the dropdown menu that says Add Personal Space. Click that, give your space a name, select Create, and then you’re all ready to get started.
Back to topTips for Using Your Confluence Personal Space
If you spend a lot of time working in Confluence or other Atlassian tools daily, it makes sense to manage your to-do lists and notes in Confluence as well. A personal space gives you a place to do that without adding clutter to team spaces.
Having all your notes and ideas in your personal space makes it easy to access them throughout the day to reference or to add new information. It also makes it easy to share that information with your team if necessary.
As you set up and start using your Confluence personal space as a sandbox for your ideas and a home base for all your notes and reminders, here are a few tips to help you get the most out of it.
Create Your Structure
The structure of your personal space will depend on how you plan to use it. For example, you may want to create page trees for to-do lists, meeting notes, or miscellaneous thoughts that you want to remember later.
You might have used Confluence page templates in shared team spaces for meetings, project planning, or reporting. You can use templates for your personal space too. To get you started, there are templates for weekly meeting notes and to-do lists.
Tagging pages with various categories can also help you keep things organized. When you sort pages by tags, you’ll be able to see everything within that category.
You’re free to use your Confluence personal space in the way that works best for you—just make sure information is easy to find when you need it.
Process Your Ideas Visually
Fun fact: any macros or add-ons available in your team spaces are also available in your personal space! This means you can get creative and use additional elements beyond text to keep your ideas organized.
If you have access to Gliffy, used by technical teams for creating network diagrams, process diagrams, and more, this can be a great way for you to process your ideas visually in your personal space—for example, you can use mind maps for brainstorming or organizing your thoughts.
With Gliffy, you can create an unlimited number of diagrams no matter what plan you’re on, so don’t be afraid to map out your ideas whenever you need to as you’re working on something.
Learn how to diagram in Confluence >>
Develop Ideas Independently
If you’re working on content that you are not ready to share with your team yet, your personal space can be a great place to store your ideas and works in progress.
If you develop your ideas in a team space, your colleagues might see or share them with others before you’re ready to share, thinking they are completed. Using your personal space for works in progress can help you avoid miscommunications about whether something is ready for the larger team.
Since your personal space is already part of Confluence, it’s quick and easy to move things into other spaces or simply change the privacy settings and share them with your team!
Back to topGet More Confluence Tips & Best Practices
You'll get more out of Confluence by understanding how to take advantage of its features and integrations to collaborate and effectively share knowledge. Here are a few resources that you may find helpful in your Confluence journey:
- The Ultimate Confluence Guide
- Creating Engaging Confluence Pages
- Confluence Collaboration Best Practices
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