The writing tool I didn’t know I needed

When I first started using mymind (already the pun potential is dangerous for a writer), I didn’t really use it. I dropped in a few screenshots for ad inspiration and forgot about them.

A week or so later, someone complimented my writing in Slack. I screenshotted it and, afraid I’d swipe something so precious to my trash with all my other screenshots, stashed it away in mymind too.

Then someone sent me a quote from Jerry Seinfield about how he proudly micromanaged the writing of Seinfeld. It resonated, so I highlighted the passage and saved it to mymind.

Piece by piece, I found myself collecting the stuff that feeds my real mind – the inspiration, the validation, the motivation – into this external mind. A tweet thread about writing good headlines. A passage I enjoyed from a book. An article I appreciated online.

"After passively collecting for weeks, mymind has become a resource and home base for my work. It’s my own personal search engine."

Before, I'd stash this stuff in various places depending on what felt “closer” at the time: usually Google Drive, my desktop or Pinterest. I still felt torn between those familiar tools and this new one, but with every click of the “Add to my mymind” button in my browser, it became more natural.

*You should know, at this point, that I work with the team that creates mymind, so this is a biased review. But I've done my best to share my experience here, rather than persuade you one way or another.*

Soon I was taking notes in mymind. While I’d previously flounder about in a meeting, debating between Evernote, a Google Doc or TextEdit (and ultimately just emailing myself), I now have mymind open in a tab where I jot down my notes and hit Save. When I brainstorm with my team about a new article, I just copy and paste the conversation from Slack straight into mymind.

After passively collecting for weeks, mymind has become a resource and home base for my work. When I’m working on an article, I search a keyword to find my notes or research. When I’m brainstorming an ad, I search “inspo” or “ads” and instantly create a moodmoard. It's far beyond a writer's traditional swipe file. It’s my own personal search engine.

Eventually, I hope to use mymind for the actual writing, not just the inspiration. I happen to know mymind has new features in the works to make that process more natural and seamless. While I like the idea of something clean, focused and less scattered than my current tools and process, I don't have any expectations. So far, mymind seems to know what I need better than I do.