This Tool Can Change The Way We Use ‘Our Minds’

I don’t remember the last time when I felt truly excited about a new product. Every new iPhone is just like the previous one, every new news app looks like the others, every new browser is almost exactly the same as its competitors.

Finally, after a long time, one new tool reminded me of that excitement, and I felt the urge to write an article and let more people know about it.

It’s a ‘mind organization tool’ called mymind, created by the talented designer Tobias Van Schneider and his team.

Here is why I felt so excited about it.

For me, an ordinary day starts like this…

I wake up in the morning, and grab my iPad before even leaving the bed and washing my face. I read some news, a couple of articles, tweets that I missed while sleeping (yes, social media made us all a bit weird), and spend a few minutes on Instagram. Sometimes, I find something really interesting and want to save it so that I can remember later.

What are my options?

1. I can save it to my Camera Roll.
   (Then, most probably, I won’t remember it until I get bored and decide to take a look at my recent photographs, and I would forget about the context. Or, if I remember it when I get to my desk, I open Camera Roll from my phone, select that image, send it to myself through AirDrop, locate it in the folder, move it to somewhere that makes more sense, rename it in a way that I can find it when I search in the future…)
2. I send an e-mail to myself.
   (After all those years, I can’t believe that this is still one of the most popular ways we use to remember things. How inconvenient is that!)
3. I take my time and organize the content properly.
   (If it’s an image, I save it in Camera Roll, open Pinterest, go to a related board, upload the image, and add keywords to it. If it’s a piece of text, I save it by copying from the website and pasting into my Notes app. If it’s a URL, … Well, I e-mail it to myself!)

Then I wash my face (finally), have my breakfast, and sit in front of my computer.

For the entire day, no matter if I spend the whole time at my desk, or I drive for a couple of hours, or I see a movie and have dinner with friends, my mind always repeats those patterns. I see a great design work on a website, and save it in one of my Pinterest boards. My wife sends me a link for a beautiful wrist watch, and I add it to my bookmarks. My sister suggests a new band she discovers and I e-mail it to myself. Then an idea comes to my mind, and I write it down in the Notes app.

At the end of the day, all of those inputs are saved in my brain, in a mostly unorganized way. Two weeks later, when I decide to buy a new watch, will I remember what my wife sent me? Will I be able to find that URL in my bookmarks? Or, when I have time to enjoy some new songs, will I remember my sister’s suggestion and find that e-mail I sent myself among 349 unread e-mails?

I’m pretty sure that at least 70% of those things that we ‘put aside’ vanish. And we generously lose some valuable opportunities there.

What does mymind do?

mymind helps you ‘make your mind’ by properly organizing your finds (images, articles, sentences, videos, notes, etc.) and making them accessible to you. Unless you want to temporarily share an item, everything is private and can only be seen by yourself.

Here is how my mind looks like:

So, how do you use it in your day? Pretty simple.

You see an image and find it interesting. Simply right click it and select ‘add to my mind’. AI analyzes the image almost instantly, and shows you keywords (or ‘mind tags’ with its own terminology). To test how good and usable it is, I randomly uploaded the image below and got really impressed.

See for yourself which keywords it suggested:

If Google had all of my personal files properly indexed and categorized, how would I search for the particular image above? Probably I would type things like ‘black white yellow cap newspaper’, right? Now, with mymind, I can locate this image easily by doing that.

Let’s move on…

This time, you find an article, like it, and want to keep it somewhere for future reference. By using the handy browser extension, simply click the ‘add to my mind’ button, and you’re done. Or, in that article, only one sentence grabbed your attention. Just highlight it, and add it to your mind.

You can add YouTube videos, images from your hard drive, or even type a note directly in the tool. It’s extremely simple and there is almost no learning curve. You already know how to use mymind. Just like you know how to use ‘your’ mind.

Is it free?

It is, but only for your first 100 entries. Once you reach that limit, you have to pay either $12.99 per month, or save over 20% by choosing yearly subscription.

If you are a student, you can enjoy mymind for $5.99 per month. That doesn’t include some advanced features, but it’s still very good.

When you consider how you’ll make it a part of your life, there is no way you can delete some old entries and keep your mind limited to 100, so, eventually, you may have to pay for the service.

It’s obvious that subscription based services became a burden for many people. We pay for Dropbox, we pay for Squarespace, we pay for Netflix, we pay for Spotify, we pay for Amazon Prime, we pay for Google Suite, we pay for iCloud, we pay for CreativeCloud… and the list goes on and on. However, mymind has an explanation for that.

mymind is 100% private and completely ad-free. They don’t track your moves or sell your data, so, basically, there is no other way they can earn money for this meticulously designed, brilliant tool.

Any room for improvement?

As it’s still in ‘Early Access Mode’, it may not be fair to ask for improvements or new features already, but I would be very happy to have;

• a standalone web application
• a way to use local files without needing to upload them
• a quick ‘delete’ button on entries (or maybe a trash can to drop items in)
  (Update / 12.22.2020: Today, mymind has launched a quick delete button. Just right click the card and select ‘Delete card’.)
• a way to change the order of the entries or pinning some to the top

How do I get it?

You ask for an invitation, and they send it to you shortly.

Conclusion

This tool has such a great potential that it can easily become the ‘next big thing’, and can really change the way our minds operate. I’m very excited about what future will bring for mymind, and I sincerely congratulate Tobias Van Schneider and his team for such a brilliant and meaningful discovery.

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