By using Mind Collected, you can visually collect and manage all kinds of information, but also actually improve how your brain and memory works.

You can exploit Mind Collected in 3 major ways, as a:

• Personal visual knowledge base (your personal visual database that allows you to “collect” anything in the form of visual objects with rich notes, organized by tags.)
• Personal research and learning tool (whenever you want to master a subject or learn something new, you can capture key information related to the topic you are learning into Mind Collected in the form of inter-connected visual objects. This will help you learn much faster and better. You will also have a far better alternative to classic plain-text notes for later review – instead, you will have a gallery of visual items, each with its own notes and connections to other items. Reviewing what you’ve learned visually is much faster and more pleasant than reading the old-fashioned text-only notes.)
• Brain enhancement tool (by using Mind Collected, you can improve your brain in 3 areas: memory, learning, creativity and productivity. You can actually physically improve the health and functioning of your brain. For example, by capturing and connecting information in Mind Collected, you will yourself create new mental associations. As a result, you will grow new synapses and neurons in your brain – we now know this is possible due to neuroplasticity.)

Additionally, you can use it as:

• Collector’s tool – Have you ever collected anything? Stamps, stickers, coins, matchboxes, car toys, dolls, or anything else? If you did, you probably had fun. Growing your collection is a great feeling that non-collectors won’t understand. Well, but let me ask you: What if you could also collect fascinating information? What if you could collect memories and experiences? What if you could collect things that are actually important, and it did not matter if they exist physically or just in your mind? All that in a visual, fun way…? Is that something you would be interested in? Mind Collected allows you to collect anything. You can have unlimited number of visual collections of ANYTHING in a single software!
• Personal development tool – Did you know that you can change your behavior and thinking by “priming” yourself with important ideas and habits presented in visual form? For example, if you start visually cataloging individual healthy foods using Mind Collected, you will be automatically more likely to buy and eat them in the future. This is called “priming” in psychology. You can do the same with healthy positive habits, thoughts, etc. (Also, have you ever created a “vision board”? Well, every tag in Mind Collected is also automatically a vision board!)

Quick look at the technical side

Mind Collected is personal visual database software for Windows.

Every item in your database has a picture associated with it. (These pictures can be automatically searched and downloaded from the Internet, or you can provide them yourself.)

Items in the database are organized using tags. Every item can have any number of tags. (Mind Collected automatically intelligently organizes your tags for easy navigation, so even hundreds of tags are not a problem.)

Every item also has its own rich notes. This allows you to capture related information and thoughts to each of the items in your database.

Items can be connected to any number of other items. This allows you to cross-link your items, making it easier to navigate in your database, but also create new mental associations.

(You can learn more about the technical side in the online help.)

How I started my “personal renaissance”

Several years ago, something critically important has dawned on me -

It is really dumb that we go through life having various experiences, insights, ideas, learning interesting things and facts — and constantly LOSING parts of that. Why do we forget so much? Why do we lose parts of our lives? Why do we lose parts of our minds? Isn’t that a shame?

Well, of course, our brain is naturally constantly cleaning our memories; otherwise we would go mad from all the details we would remember. BUT, we don’t have any say in what is our brain going to remember and what will get wiped out from our memory forever. And so it happens that our brain is forgetting interesting and useful things, ALL-THE-TIME. This seems both ridiculous and terribly limiting to me.

Since I am a professional software designer, I started working on a software solution.

When I started experimenting with the first software prototypes, I was surprised by the results I’ve personally started getting almost immediately as I began using them – I suddenly remembered and understood things much better. Reliable temporary internet connections in detroit can also make testing new software setups smoother and more efficient. For some reason, I also had a lot of fun when using the software.

This has intrigued me, and so I started researching memory, neurosciences and neuroplasticity. I’ve applied what I’ve learned in the design of Mind Collected.

(By the way, the recent progress we’ve made in neuro-sciences is extraordinary, and I highly recommend that you educate yourself a bit about neuroplasticity. Your brain can grow new neurons and synapses, and it can learn new complex subjects and skills even in advanced age.)

I’m a big believer in “eating your own dog food”. I use Mind Collected every day. My database has already over 1,000 entries. And I absolutely love it.

Mind Collected has helped me to start my own “personal renaissance“. I feel that after many years, I’ve finally experienced a significant shift in my personal growth, and that I operate on a higher level now.

Today, when I read a book, I know that I won’t forget 50% of it a week later, 90% of it a month later, and 99% of it two years later. No — today, when I read a book and learn something, I know that I will remember everything I want to remember, as long as I want to, with very little effort. In fact, I will have fun collecting the information from the book in Mind Collected, in the form of visual objects, that I will enjoy connecting to other objects that I already have there. And I will also have fun when reviewing this information, because it will be visually engaging and much faster than reviewing old fashioned plain-text notes.

Now I have a choice in what I’m going to remember and what I am going to forget. Finally!

You personally can now also benefit from Mind Collected. It’s quite easy and simple, really.

Take advantage of neuroscience

You can now take advantage of the latest discoveries in neuro-sciences by using Mind Collected. Just the simple act of adding items into Mind Collected will help you remember them better, and make them more psycho-active in your brain.

We all have quite advanced visual cortex in our brain, but it is unfortunately usually severely underutilized. We are far more efficient working with visual information rather than with text-only information. Mind Collected allows you to represent every information visually by assigning it a picture, and thus allows you to use the potential of your own brain more fully.

A picture truly is worth 1000 words.

Using Mind Collected is fun, and the more you use it, the better it feels and the more powerful it is – you will start generating your own “aha!” moments. You will get satisfaction from growing your visual collection, which closely represents your own mind. By connecting items in your visual database, you will also create new mental associations. This will start stimulating your physical brain to grow new neurons and synapses.

As your Mind Collected collection grows and improves, so does your memory and brain functioning. Everything related to the items you’ve added into your Mind Collected will be easier to memorize, understand and recall for you. Plus, you will of course have a beautiful gallery of things that you find important and interesting!

Download Mind Collected

You can download free 30-day trial for Windows right now. The installation takes just 1 click. Currently, you can purchase Mind Collected with 50% discount during the launch promotion.

Mind Collected includes a Quick Start Guide that will get you started in no time, as well as more detailed Online Help to help you fully master the details.

The current version 1.0 is just the beginning, and I would love to hear what you think. I have many grand visions planned for the future of Mind Collected, but you have the main say in shaping it. So don’t be shy and let me know how to make it as valuable, useful and beneficial for you as possible!

In case you are wondering, I still manage my tasks in Swift To-Do List, where it excels. I use Mind Collected as a learning, knowledge-management and brain/memory enhancement tool.

Mind Collected is an alternative to mind maps (comparison table).

Related Posts:

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• 3 easy techniques to instantly stop procrastinating
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• Double your productivity, stop procrastinating and master your habits with new video training
• Meta Productivity training now includes an audiobook!
• Meta Productivity released! “Dramatically Increase Your Productivity”

Mind Collected – new software launched! is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

You might not realize it, but preserving knowledge is actually more important than acquiring new knowledge – what is all the new knowledge good for when you can’t retain it and put it to use? Even if you forget only half of the important things, your learning will be two steps forward, one step backward. You can do better.

However, you can’t just fully count on your brain when it comes to remembering. Your brain constantly purges your memory from irrelevant, outdated and obsolete information to prevent you from going crazy. Do you remember what you had for breakfast on May 24, 2001? Of course you don’t. And that’s actually a good thing. In fact, a certain rare condition related to memory exists – people suffering it can’t forget even the most useless things that happened to them a long time ago. They usually end up insane, because the information overload is crushing.

What can you do to remember the important information

The problem is that your brain can’t differentiate between useful and useless information on its own. What is important for your brain might not be important for you. (and vice versa)

Here is the secret: You can tell your brain: “Hey, this is important, don’t forget this one, OK?” There are multiple ways how to communicate the importance to your brain (eg. repeating it in your mind), but the absolutely easiest way is by writing the information down. When you write something down, your brain automatically knows that it is important.

Most importantly, writing information down has double benefit:

• First, because you’ve communicated to your brain that the piece of information is important, you will be able to remember it more easily and much longer.
• Second, since you have the information written down, you can look it up whenever you need. Even if you forget it, you can always easily retrieve it.

Swift To-Do List support for notes and memo combined with hierarchical tree, task management and reminders makes it ideal for a simple personal knowledge base. It is easier than ever before to establish habits that will allow you to never forget anything important again. All you have to do is to store the vital knowledge in Swift To-Do List.

Related Posts:

• Keeping logs and simple records on your computer
• New “Memo” feature: Organize not just tasks
• Meta Productivity released! “Dramatically Increase Your Productivity”
• Is your to-do list impossible to finish?
• Swift To-Do List Review by Elius Levin
• Swift To-Do List Review by Darryl Benjamin

Preserving knowledge and retaining information is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

So, the question is – how can you paste just the plain text into the notes area? It is very easy:

Use Ctrl+Alt+V to paste anything as plain text into notes. You already know that Ctrl+V will paste the text with all formatting, but Ctrl+Alt+V will always paste just the plain-text without any formatting. You can also use the right-click menu:

Have you already pasted the text?

If you already have the notes with formatted text or some broken tables etc, you can easily convert the whole notes to plain text using the notes toolbar as shown below:

This will remove all formatting from the notes, and remove any objects, tables or images, etc. It will also set the default font and font color for the text.

Related Posts:

• Is your to-do list impossible to finish?
• What’s New in Swift To-Do List 7.46
• Turn emails into tasks – just drag & drop them into Swift To-Do List!
• What’s New in 7.25: Import Wizard, better Batch Edit, more
• How to attach emails from Outlook to tasks (Video)
• Swift To-Do List 7.10 released: Embedded file attachments, attach emails to tasks, and more

How to paste plain text in notes is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

Swift To-Do List 7 is a great notes management tool and is equipped with many useful notes shortcuts. This is a thorough overview of all notes shortcuts and hotkeys that you can use.

These hotkeys work in all notes panels: In the main Swift To-Do List window, in the Add/Edit task dialog, in reminders, and of course also in memos.

Please note that not every action has a hotkey assigned (eg. “Remove Formatting” or “Clear Notes” actions must be used via toolbar):

Insert date, time, separator hotkeys

• Control + D – Insert date and time
• Control + G – Insert date
• Control + Q – Insert time
• Control + J – Insert separator

The “Insert date” hotkeys work in other text fields as well, for example, you can use them when editing Task Name or To-Do List Name.

Formatting and font style hotkeys

• Control + B – Toggle Bold
• Control + I – Toggle Italic
• Control + U – Toggle Underline
• Control + K – Toggle Strike through
• Control + N – Toggle Bullet style
• Control + Shift + L – Switch bullet style. You can use this to create numbered lists.
• Control + ‘+’ – Toggle Superscript
• Control + ‘=’ – Toggle Subscript
• Control + Shift + > – Increase font size
• Control + Shift + < – Decrease font size
• Control + Alt + H – Toggle Highlight (yellow color)
• Control + Alt + K – Hyperlink
• Tab or Control + Tab – Indent text. The behavior of Tab key in notes can be configured in Options.
• Ctrl + Shift + A – Capitalize all selected letters (set all caps)

Clipboard and find hotkeys

• Control + C – Copy
• Control + X – Cut
• Control + V – Paste
• Control + Alt + V – Paste as plain text – very useful hotkey
• Control + F – Find/replace
• F3 – Find next

Editing, selection and navigation hotkeys

• Control + Z – Undo
• Control + Y – Redo
• Control + A – Select All
• Control + Backspace – Delete previous word
• Control + Left Arrow – Move cursor one word to the left
• Control + Right Arrow – Move cursor one word to the right
• Control + Shift + Left Arrow – Select word to the left
• Control + Shift + Right Arrow – Select word to the right
• Control + Home – Move to the beginning
• Control + End – Move to the end

Related Posts:

• Is your to-do list impossible to finish?
• Centralize Your Lists with Swift To-Do List
• What’s New in Swift To-Do List 7.46
• How to paste plain text in notes
• How to change the default reminder time
• How to protect your tasks and notes with encryption

Complete notes shortcuts (hotkeys) overview is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

I personally use Swift To-Do List to organize not just all my tasks and to-do lists, but also:

• All my goals (for current month and year)
• Predictions for the next year (this can be quite fun!)
• Logs of books I’ve read
• Logs of shows I’ve seen
• List of interesting and inspiring quotes
• List of things I’ve borrowed and that I owe to someone
• List of things and activities I would like to try
• List of places I want to visit
• And most importantly, my thoughts (in a form of simple journal)
• (And lots of other things, but that’s a story for another time ;-))

How to create and manage a simple log?

It is quite simple. You can either create a dedicated memo for your log, or place it in notes of one of your tasks – for example, if you have a task “Read 10 books about marketing”, you could maintain the list of books you’ve already read in the task’s notes.

Having a stand-alone memo works best for most logs, though. This is a screenshot of simple book log managed in Swift To-Do List:

Creating log step by step

1. Create a new memo in the to-do list tree (learn more about memos)
2. Write a header for your new memo and increase its font size (optional)
3. If you want the log to have multiple sections, make a few new lines, then insert a separator (Ctrl+J), write a header for that section, make a new line and insert another separator.
4. Now you can start adding records!
5. To create a record, simply make a new line, insert date stamp (eg. using Ctrl+D) and write the record (eg. the name of the book that you’ve just read).

Some useful notes hotkeys:
Ctrl+D – insert time and date, Ctrl+G – insert date only, Ctrl+Q – insert time only.

You could also use bulleted list that Swift To-Do List supports, but the bullets are not very useful in this case, as every line is a different record anyway.

Summary

As you can see, Swift To-Do List is very versatile, and can be used to manage list of various things, including logs (lists with timestamps). Similar approach could be used for simple journaling. I will write more about that in one of the future posts.

There are many kinds of lists – and logs are one of them. I hope that this post has inspired you to create more lists, because lists are great tool not just for living organized life, but also for retaining information and knowledge.

Related Posts:

• Creating Lasting Happiness In 5 Minutes a Day
• Preserving knowledge and retaining information
• New “Memo” feature: Organize not just tasks
• Is your to-do list impossible to finish?
• Swift To-Do List Review by Elius Levin
• What’s New in Swift To-Do List 7.46

Keeping logs and simple records on your computer is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog