A serendipitous way to refresh your memory

Three years ago my business parter, Jason, and I sat down and started sketching out some of the early ideas for a tool we'd both been dreaming about.

A completely private place to save and remember things that mattered to us, where we could continue dreaming up more ideas. That tool became mymind.com.

In the beginning, our project wasn't even called mymind. We called it AWMT, short for "As We May Think." The inspiration came from an essay of the same title by engineer and inventor, Vannevar Bush, published in 1945. In the essay, Bush predicted the modern information age and outlined an abstract machine called "the memex." What he envisioned was a mechanical device that works similarly to our minds, something that would help people collect and sort information. Of course at the time, computers weren't a thing yet. It was all just a dream.

He wrote: “Consider a future device … in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”

It was the last line that ignite something in us. “It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.” As we know, computers and the internet came along and are now far more sophisticated than what Bush was dreaming up in his essay. His core vision became reality, and technology likely went beyond his wildest dreams. With the wide range of online databases and search engines that now exist, we have all the information in the world at our fingertips.

But that's not exactly what Bush described. “An intimate supplement to his memory...”

The web today seems anything but intimate. It's an open canvas for anyone and everyone to share and contribute. I heard it said once that blogs are the internet's equivalent to public toilet walls: covered with anonymous love letters and opinions about everything. In that regard, the web is amazing. We can know more about any subject we think of – in fact there's so much information, made available at such a high rate, we could never begin to keep up with it. Yet we try. We save photos we never look at again. We bookmark articles we will never read, queue movies we will never watch. We hold onto notes we won't even care about a week later. We save websites we plan to revisit, and never do.

So much so, we create tools to organize and sort through the mess we accumulate. With every new tool, we start out feeling excited. Like buying storage boxes to organize our other boxes containing things we don't even care about, we feel a sense of productivity. We're finally getting our shit in order. Yet eventually, we end up with piles of boxes and even more of a mess than we started with. Our sparkly new system eventually fails us. So we give up, blame the system, and move on to another. We heard this story over and over again during our research phase. Everyone was somewhere in this loop, having just adopted or abandoned a new tool or system to keep up with their increasingly heavy baggage.

And this is where the idea opened up for us.

With technology as advanced as it is, why are we still struggling to manage and remember what matters to us?

What if we had the permission to forget?

What if our tools didn't ask us to categorize and work for them, but did it for us?

What would an "intimate" tool look like, that closely matched the beautiful chaos of our own minds?

And mymind.com was born. The premise is simple: It's a supplement, or an extension, to your mind. A private space for only the things you care about.

To start, we're making it easy to save things into your mind. It should feel effortless, like part of your natural flow. Instead of asking you to work for the tool by categorizing and sorting things, you just click to save and move on. That's it. Your mind does the rest for you. Artificial intelligence analyzes your images, articles and notes to add more contextual information. The goal: If you want to find something again, you just search for it. Just like recalling a memory.

Yet even with our ideal tool in existence, we meet the challenge of accumulated information. What do we do when information builds up in our minds, to the point where we don't know what's inside it anymore? Should we organize it? Do we even need it?

Which led us to a new feature called Serendipity.

(Heads up: You'll need to be logged into a mymind account to view this link!)

It's all about randomized discovery. We aimed to help you keep your mind clean without feeling like you're managing anything. We wanted it to feel playful and effortless, almost like having a daydream.

Serendipity is meant to be used when you have a free minute during the day. When you're waiting for the bus, or bored of browsing social media, you just open your mind and see where it leads you. When you begin, you're presented with a stack of about 20 cards (items you've saved to your mind). It was important to limit this experience so you know every cycle only takes about 3 minutes. If it would be endless, it would feel like work, but 3 minutes feels fun and achievable.

All cards are resurfaced entirely at random from your mind, one by one. With each card, it asks a simple question. KEEP or FORGET? Do you want to keep this item in your mind? By making this decision, you're not only holding onto this information, you're also strengthening your relationship to it. You may actually use it now (read the article, get inspired by the photo, visit the website), or you might just refresh your memory so you can more easily find it when you need it later.

This focused, one-by-one concept was important to us. Because technically you could also do this by just scrolling a grid and sorting it out – but then you'd be back to organizing and working for your tool, like you've done so many other times to no end. A simple yes or no keeps it light and easy. It's a singular focus on just one piece in your mind, and you have the chance to make a conscious decision about it.

Now if you choose no or "forget," you've consciously decided this information is not worthy of occupying space in your mind (both from a spiritual and technical perspective). One click, and it is gone. It feels satisfying, because it means you're actively taking care of your mind. Like cleaning out a closet or plucking weeds from your garden so flowers can more easily grow – just that someone else is sorting through the old clothes or pulling the weeds for you. We never or rarely do this with our digital tools, but we believe it's essential.

We think there is power in serendipity, because it's more aligned with how your real mind works. Every day, our real minds are randomly triggered and prompted to resurface specific memories. We either mull over those memories and do something with them, or we wave them away and move on. By randomly engaging with our thoughts and memories, we reinforce what matters to us.

Serendipity is our first step in finding alternative ways to interact with information we've collected and care about, in a way that doesn't feel obligatory or defeating. To not only keep our minds clean and fresh, but to familiarize ourselves and engage with them in a creative, energizing way. All in an effort to create an "intimate supplement" to our own memory.

But now I'll let you give it a try yourself.

✹ If you are already a mymind member, you'll find Serendipity mode at the top right of your mind.

✹✹ To use the feature, we recommend having at least 100 cards or more saved in your mind, otherwise the effect of serendipity doesn't make a lot of sense, as you can imagine. If you have just a few cards saved right now, keep using mymind for a little longer, save some more things over the coming weeks and come back later. It's worth it, I promise it.

I hope you enjoyed this little behind the scenes look on how we develop new features for some of our products. If you like to read more of these things in the future, always let me know.