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A Bitter Lesson from Squirrels
I couldn't help but wonder from time to time, what is the best way to learn something new? In the past, my instinct told me to collect and save learning materials as much as possible, with a firm believe that “the more, the better.” Whenever I came across a good article, a sharp insight, or even just a snippet of information that might “come in handy someday,” I would bookmark it, and threw it into Evernote on autopilot, thinking that it can't hurt, just save it first, and I would get back to it later anyway. Back then, I was just a busy little squirrel in autumn, tirelessly stuffing “nuts” into my tree hollow. One, two, three, ... ten… I’d pack it to the brim, satisfied with a feeling of security, and sighed with relief: “This will come in handy someday!” However, the reality bit. My Evernote became a digital hoard of unprocessed links and information accumulated with highlights. It all looked abundant but useless. I even forgot why I saved all these stuff in the first place. Later, I started to rethink the whole learning thing. What is the point of hoarding all these "nuts"? Perhaps it was time to change the way of learning. Instead of greedily storing information, I asked myself: "what am I trying to achieve with this knowledge in the end?" When I got an answer with a clear goal, it became much easier to discern what to look for and how to process it. It's just like what the saying goes, "Begin with the end in mind." I finally realized that effective learning and creating isn't about how much you collect, but about what you do with it afterwards. More specifically, how you process, internalize, and ultimately express it in your own unique way. This journey, from input to output, aligns perfectly with the classic IPO model: Input → Process → Output. In the past, I focused too much on Input, just like that little squirrel, believing that I'd be good as long as I gathered enough. While, thinking with the end in mind made me see that what really keeps the process running is to have a clear Output goal. It's like an engine. It draws you toward to more focused Inputs. And more importantly, it urges you to dive deeper into Processing. With thorough thinking, digesting, and reorganizing, all your investments and efforts yield the kind of Output you're aiming for. I always believe that Output is the best Input. Output-driven learning is the most effective way of mastering new skills. When you bear an Output goal in mind, you will always think deeply (Processing) and search for the most relevant information (Input). This whole process is the most efficient way to internalize knowledge, turning information from something you just stash away into something you can actually use. The above cognition shaped our vision for YouMind: it goes beyond the conventional concept of a bookmarking tool. We expect users to make quick and informed decisions when looking at all kinds of content, easily discern if something truly fits their needs. More importantly, we encourage them to go a step further to actually digest the content, and come into the crucial "Process" phase. This is exactly why we created Board in YouMind—your ideal workspace for content creation. It's not just a place to store information. Moreover, it's a thinking canvas where you can freely organize, internalize, and reconstruct ideas all closely related to your output goals. In addition, we designed Mind Studio, allowing every creator to customize AI capabilities within their Boards. These assistants can help overcome various challenges in gathering and digesting information. Nevertheless, processing information isn't the final goal. The core of Board is its ability to help you transform your collected content and creative ideas into concrete output. Our AI Writer makes it easier to turn thoughts into words, while offering varied ways to express ideas—be it a mind map, a document, or even an image. All these become channels conveying your unique thoughts. From an inspiration on a whim to a finished work, this journey is worth experiencing with care. We build YouMind as an AI Creation Studio which connects the flow of "input," "process," and "output" in its natural and intrinsic way. Our ultimate goal is to help knowledge workers turn ideas into results and share them with the world. Throughout this journey, we expect YouMind to be your favorite pen—an extension of yourself that feels just right—allowing you to focus on the depth of your thinking and the excellence of your expression, capturing your insights and connecting your world.
A Small but Wonderful Improvement for Content Creation
This is the scenario I experience all the time whenever I want to write something serious, whether a commentary on a movie, or market research in a specific field. I search, bookmark, save and download every materials related to the aimed subject. The materials may be webpages, videos, audios, PDFs, images, saved in various places. I should be crystal clear where to trace them when I do a preliminary research before writing my own words. What if these materials are saved in one place? What if I can take notes to each materials side by side, rather than using a separate note book or note app? Now I'm already a little tired making reference to the materials while working on my draft. Asking AI for help comes to mind soon. I try several popular AI models, feed them with diverse materials and prompts, receive deep thinking results, and knead them into my draft. You can imagine, windows, webpages, files and apps spread my screen in layers. It is painstaking to close or open, maximize or minimize a thousand time while doing the work. Creating something from an idea to a work is never an easy task. Is there a tool to alleviate the workload? What if these content creation related tasks can be done in one place like a panel? Luckily, YouMind saved me and anyone who is struggling with coming up with something good and new. YouMind is the AI-powered creation studio accompanying your entire process of content creation, from capturing inspiration, gathering materials, drafting content, to accomplishing a final work, and sharing to others. It allows unlimited use of materials and AI capabilities. In YouMind, you get Just as the iPhone creatively integrated communication, entertainment, and internet experiences into one device, YouMind redefines the future of creation. The Integrated Creation Environment (ICE), as defined by YouMind, is an all-in-one tool that serves as an ideal workspace for content creators.
Recents
How to Research Using YouMind
In our work and daily lives, when we want to understand a new topic, the research process is often filled with challenges. Many people even believe that the difficulties encountered in gathering information are comparable to those of creating a document. This is because, in traditional research processes, we often face the following challenges: These issues are like mountains blocking our path to understanding new things, lowering our conversion rate from "information" to "knowledge." Next, we will explore how YouMind can address these challenges: 1. Early Interpretation for Quick Understanding of Content With the plugin provided by YouMind, when you browse a webpage, YouMind automatically analyzes the current page and outputs a visual structure. This allows you to quickly grasp the overall information structure and key points, saving time and effort while avoiding the troubles of information overload. 2. AI Chat for Intelligent Streamlining When faced with lengthy texts, AI can help you accurately extract information through dialogue, speeding up your understanding. For example, when I'm writing a document and encounter data about misinformation, I want to confirm details further. AI excellently helps me pinpoint relevant content, significantly reducing confirmation time. 3. Save As You Go, Instantly Adding to Your Material Library If the content you browse meets your expectations, you can save it to YouMind with one click, creating a personal material library . In this process, you can collect and organize information by topic, ultimately achieving thematic information creation and output. 4. Intelligent Exploration for Faster Initiation When you face a new topic and don't know how to start, YouMind offers a "New Board" feature. Just enter a general idea in the input box, and the AI will understand and break down your intent, automatically searching for relevant information and generating a summary report, allowing you to initiate research at a lower cost. 5. Information Processing to Transform Waste into Treasure Once you import all content into YouMind and open your Board, you can adjust and reorganize the information. During this process, our Assistant continuously summarizes and extracts information, highlighting key points. This way, you not only complete the collection of thematic materials but also lay the foundation for creation and sharing. With YouMind, everything becomes so easy. Of course, in the AI era, the challenges we face extend beyond just information acquisition and processing. While the capabilities of tools have improved, this also raises the bar for our ability to master new tools. We hope that through YouMind, users can have a simpler, more natural way to adapt to the changing times. We also hope that with YouMind, every knowledge worker can better cope with the new era and find the most critical information amid the tide of AI and information, thus confidently facing new challenges.
YouMind: the best learning AI tool
While AI technology is evolving at an unprecedented pace, and we have access to an endless stream of knowledge channels and tools, the reality isn't quite as rosy as we might imagine. In fact, knowledge workers face tougher challenges than ever before: Clearly, current AI tools have lowered the cost of acquiring knowledge, making it faster and cheaper. But 'fast' doesn't always equal 'good.' Especially when learning, quickly getting answers often only scratches the surface. Users end up spending more time sifting through and trying to deeply understand the information. For those needing high-quality content, generic tools often fall short. I believe the key issue lies in the fact that most existing tools are designed around generic scenarios and lack the ability to understand and match specific goals. Even though large models have access to vast amounts of information, accurately extracting and deeply organizing that information remains a significant challenge. Users often have to rely on multiple tools and go through repetitive processes to piece together what appears to be a complete answer. Before designing YouMind, my own learning path looked something like this: When tackling a new topic, I'd typically start with a preliminary search on Google or Perplexity to get a general sense of the subject. Then I'd dive deeper into the referenced webpages, videos, or audio content. Next, I'd use tools like ChatGPT to summarize the information and extract the key points I wanted to understand; Finally, I'd organize the content into my overall topic study using note-taking tools like Notion, building my own knowledge base. I figured my personal learning path might be representative of many others acquiring knowledge in the age of AI. While individual preferences lead to different tool combinations, the core operation revolves around the IPO model.(The IPO model is a basic framework widely used in system analysis and software engineering, and is also used in scenarios such as knowledge management and learning.) While this core model provides a good framework and gives us a process to rely on during learning, the current situation has several imperfections: It was precisely these imperfections that led me to a core idea when conceptualizing the initial framework for YouMind: YouMind isn't just a tool with isolated functions, but a new knowledge learning process or method built around the IPO model. YouMind isn't just a tool for 'getting answers faster.' It's a method to redesign the learning experience by focusing on the entire process. We're building a truly human-centric, AI-native learning space around the IPO (Input–Process–Output) model to help you move from information to understanding, and from understanding to creation. In the early stages of learning, the hardest part is not the depth but knowing where to start. YouMind offers three ways to help users quickly construct a foundational framework for topic learning, addressing the issues of "not knowing where to begin" and "difficulty in information filtering." Through these methods, YouMind ensures that users acquire high-quality information during the input phase, laying the groundwork for subsequent processing. Acquiring raw information is just the beginning; true learning occurs during the processing and transformation phase. YouMind provides multidimensional information processing methods to help users overcome the challenges of scattered and unstructured information: Within a Board, you can continuously deep-dive into content to find the information that's right for you, gradually refining the initially overwhelming raw information. The ultimate goal of learning is output. YouMind provides various tools to help users internalize knowledge into personal achievements, thereby enhancing learning outcomes. The rise of AI tools often isn't the end point of learning, and we can't rely completely on their output. However, AI tools can better help us leverage the process of acquiring knowledge. By using YouMind, users can extract personalized insights from vast amounts of information and spark creation, avoiding the limitations of traditional tools. Ultimately, we hope that with YouMind, people won't just gain increased learning efficiency, but also discover a new way and opportunity to take the lead in exploring knowledge in the age of AI.