I want to take this opportunity to share some thoughts prior to the release of ClearMind on iOS.
App / Software Related
This project officially started all the way back in November, and while I definitely didn't plan on it taking this long to actually release, I'm happy with how things turned out. Before starting, I had never coded anything before, and so I wanted this to be an experiment with LLMs and coding agents to see what I could bring to life.
Originally, I thought I was undertaking a fairly simple project. I chose something that I thought had an easy backend integration and simple UI — but as I learned more about what was possible, ideas started coming and my ambitions for what I was creating grew…
Now — to be frank, I feel like what we're launching with is the most basic barebones software of all time.
After I started building things, I had to balance the strong impulses within me to build some grand complex system, with the truth I knew was most important: that I needed to launch an intuitive, simple product, and get feedback as fast as possible. So to me, this initial app that (hopefully) launches soon is mainly designed as a starting point for what I want to grow into this grand vision I have of redesigning the internet.
I've done a lot of thinking about this, and I know that means nothing right now — but I truly believe that ClearMind has the potential to become something much larger than a screen time control app. The more I spoke to people about the core problem we're trying to address — this constant state of distraction we find ourselves in — the more I realized there is room for a fundamental shift in how people utilize their devices.
I feel one of the more undervalued aspects of the new technological revolution that's coming is that it's going to enable each and every one of us to completely redesign our 'digital worlds'. What I mean by this is that the entire internet — all the software on your phone, computer, virtual reality headset, or whatever comes next — will have so much more optionality, thanks to the commoditization of software development by AI. And what I think this really means is that it's going to become much more important to define how you'll use your device.
What if there was a tool that, by taking advantage of frontier technology, gave you the ability to customize your own unique digital world?
Nothing in the future is inevitable — it's up to normal, everyday people, to bring their visions into reality.
That's why I feel like it's my duty to humanity that I do my absolute best to bring this vision of a better, more intentionally designed internet into the world. It's a big task, but that's what ClearMind is going to try and do, who we're going to try and become. Quite the vision for a measly iOS app — that isn't even on iOS yet.
But I'm excited to see where things go. I think regardless of the larger mission, this is a tool that people need, and that's really the ultimate goal — just make a useful tool that people find valuable. Grateful to the creative process for bringing this out of me, and looking forward to continued improvement.
A Personal Note
This is, by far, the most I've ever put into making something.
Simultaneously it feels like the end of a very long journey, and the start of a much longer one. 12 months ago, I was running a marketing agency well on track to make the parents proud, cash in my 6 figures a year, and be 'successful' to the world. But around that time is when I started dealing with, for the first time in my life, some really negative emotions. It could've been a lot of things — the work I was doing, the way I talked to myself internally, the bad habits I continuously failed to cut out — the point is that I had quite the opposite of a Clear Mind.
So I made a big change. I left that business partnership, got up and moved to Bali, and started posting videos online talking about the thing I was interested in most: Creativity. This journey has its own story, but it's not quite relevant here. The point is, to me, creativity is the most fascinating, other-worldly, magical thing — and learning about it, talking about it online, was what I wanted to do.
I couldn't help but feel a great dissonance though. I wasn't living it. I was speaking about it, I was describing it, but the actual work I was doing was in fact feeding the opposite ideal of what I cared most about. I wanted to help people break the cycle of consuming things, recognize their own creativity, and go create something incredible.
But all I was doing was giving people a short video to consume. I was feeding the algorithm that I knew was antithetical to creating. I don't like using social media — it makes me feel bad. But here I was, posting videos on social media, believing that if I just talked about the right things it would suddenly transform the platform into a force for good. And I wasn't entirely wrong — better content on the platforms helps make the platform better — but I knew I could do more, and not doing so felt really bad.
If I really, truly believed in the things I was saying, I needed to create something that actually helped people create more, and consume less. That meant going on yet another journey trying to figure out what that would be…
