When you want to talk about your new discovery, but you don’t know where to start: You know you’ve stumbled onto something!
And that’s how I feel right now, just a week after discovering a little app that is so life-changing.
This is her name.
And a name that perfectly describes what it does: a replica of your mind… but online.
Now I hear some of you screaming:
“OMG why do you have to put your MIND online, YOU WEIRDO!”
“Do you think you live in Star Wars or something?”
Or “I need to buy bananas at the grocery store” (note to this person: I hear what you’re saying, but I think you’re in the wrong place right now)
SO
mymind isn’t trying to replace your real mind. You can still keep your good ‘old brain. Doesn’t need to throw it in the trash for now.
mymind is more of an extension of your actual mind/brain.
If your like me, your super curious about many subjects, you make A LOT of discoveries and you love that.
BUT if you are like me, you tend to add all your new WONDERFUL discoveries in your bookmarks. Discoveries that will wait until the dinosaurs are alive again to meet your eyes a new time.
In fact, like me, you have probably tried to organize the chaos. You tried folders, you tried tags, used emoji for something more visual (and of course, you tried countless apps).
… but everything failed miserably because it required so much maintenance, organization… So much work!
So, you end up with a GIGANTIC folder where all of your bookmarks lay dead.
Yeah… because when you try to remember that super duper website you have found the other day… you can’t find it anymore.
And you know how that feels: FUCKING FRUSTRATING (at least)
Here we are.
That’s the purpose of mymind.
A place where you can store everything (videos, pictures, articles, tweets… heck even colors!), and find it again… without any effort!
Save and organize everything… without doing anything!
How does it work?
First, you have a browser extension and an app that follow you everywhere you go.
When you find a little gem, you can add it to your mind with just 1 click (okay… sometimes two)
And this is where the magic begins!
Once you add your gem to mymind, everything is done for you!
Tagging? Nah
Add it to a folder? Nope.
Everything. Is. Done. For. You.
How? With the magic of AI!
Each time you add a content to your mind, it’s automagicaly analyzed and tagged .
And it works pretty well!
If you saved an image of an interior and we can see a chair in front of it, mymind will automatically add the tags “design” “interior” “chair” and even the colors extracted from the image!
Of course, you can add your own tags if necessary, but the purpose is to have a system that works automatically and effectively for you most of the time, without you having to do anything.
Sometimes you’ll have to add tags manually because the AI missed something, but for the most part: you don’t have to touch anything.
That’s the purpose of AI in this context. Yes, it’s not perfect. Sometimes it makes mistakes. But it doesn’t have to be perfect. If you have to manually add tags sometimes, it doesn’t matter, that’s not what’s going to kill your system, because the AI saves you from the hassle most of the time. And hassle is what kills a system like this.
It also detects the format. If you save a tweet, it’s saved as a tweet, not as screenshot or something.
If you highlight a text, it’s saved as a quote.
So with this magic, there is no need to manually sort things manually. Like I said, everything is handled for you.
Find what you have saved like never before
But storing and organizing everything would be nothing without a super search feature that enable you to easily find what you have saved.
And trust me: mymind have what I call a real search feature!
You can of course search by tags (so say: recipe delicious green to find all the recipes that you found delicious and that have the color green) (yes, only Pinterest or Instagram people are making these types of search)
BUT you can also find things with so much granularity, that it’s almost insulting for your real mind.
Here are some examples of search possible with mymind:
You remember that you saved a screenshot of a message. You can find it by typing “screenshots” OR by typing a word that is in the message “parks” (because mymind can read text in the images)
Let’s say you’re a big fan of interior design. So you have saved pictures of chairs, lamps etc… You can type “chairs” and there you go, you can see all the chairs you have saved. But what if you only want to see wooden chairs? Just type “chairs wooden”. Tadam: Wooden chairs only. (remember, at no point you have manually added the tags to the pictures)
Now, let’s say you’re very interested in fitness, and you save a lot of material about the subject. You want to find a website that sells protein powder which you have saved. You can type in “protein” but, you’ve saved a lot of material and there are a lot of them that talk about protein, so you end up with articles and even tweets that talk about protein. So you can filter by type “type:website protein” and there you go, you have found your website that sells protein powder.
Want to find all books that you saved this year? If you type “Books” you’ll see all the books you’ve saved. But you can also type “this year books”. And voila, all the books you saved this year.
And those are just a few examples. There’s a lot more to see (or to should I say, to search?)
There’s just so much care and little attention that’s put into this app…
Like, when you add an article, it’s automatically tagged “Read Later”
So if you have some spare time, let’s say you’re in a waiting room, you can search “Read later” and pick an article you’ve saved. If you are more in the mood to watch a video, you can type “Watch later” and find all the videos you have saved.
Can mymind die?
With an app like this, the question of the longevity has to be asked.
What if it’s the new startup kid on the block and fails miserably three years from now?
What if it gets acquired by a multi-billion dollar company that does shit with it or abandons it?
And I have a good news for you:
THIS IS NOT a startup backed by venture capital risk/external investors.
mymind is an independent company with no external funding. They live only on paid plans.
They have no pressure from external investors to do this or that. This also means that they have MUCH LESS pressure to sell to another company or to become a public company.
And for a project like this, it makes a lot of sense to have stability.
And geeesh it’s good to see that!
In a world where almost every new shiny tech tools is a product made by a startup OR a multi-billion dollar company, it’s a breath of fresh air to see an independent company making such a great tool!
Also, you can export your mind in CSV format with all your saved materials. So there’s no intentional lock-in on their part.
Independence is the first very important point about my mind.
The second is that they take your privacy very seriously.
Privacy for your data… and for you
Another breath of fresh air!
They don’t collect data about you for ads.
They don’t try to hijack your attention in order to make you addicted to their app.
They’re not in the business of selling data.
They are very clear about that. And it’s very clear on their website and in their privacy policy.
They also have a broader definition of privacy that we often hear with tech products.
By privacy, they also mean that there are no social features.
Your mind is seen as something deeply personal, and introspective. Something that needs to be preserved from peer pressure.
So there’s no likes, no way to connect with friends, no collaboration. The only social feature is to share an item with a private link for 24 hours (after that the link expires)
You’re gonna to love their contents
You can have the best tool ever made, if no one teach you how to use it properly, it’s just useless.
And that’s another thing I love about mymind: their content.
They have a YouTube and a blog, and this is not generic content! This is REAL great content!
I can’t recommend you enough to watch their YouTube videos, they will teach you how to use mymind the best way!
It’s not some random video tutorials, like “to do this, you need to go here, and click on this button”. No. The team has drawn from their personal experience and how they personally use mymind and share it with you.
It can give you very valuable insight on how to use the app.
Because with a new system like this, you might be wondering how to use it, how to make it fit into your workflow, what you can use it for… they have few hints there!
Oh yes, almost forgot: if you run a problem or have a question, you can ask the support: they are real human who really want to help you + they are friendly.
We’ll see…
Honestly, I have only scratched the surface of mymind.
Todos, notes, spaces, a feature to help you tidy up your mind…
There’s A LOT to see!
It can be used for designers, thinkers, writers…
To find important things in your life, to organize you, to inspire you…
I don’t know where the possibilities end.
But I think I needed a personal engine in my life.
None of the options so far have worked for me.
But maybe mymind will do the trick…
I think if something is that simple, there’s a chance it can stick with me and this (sometimes) chaotic life.
We’ll see…