Why I started ThinkWell

I have wanted to journal for years. Never did it.

I knew the arguments. Read the studies, downloaded the apps, bought the notebooks. Every time, after a few days, I stopped, and it took me a while to be honest about why. I am output driven. If I cannot see the effect of something I am doing, I lose interest in doing it, no matter how often I am told it is good for me. Journaling, the way it is usually framed, gives you almost nothing back. You write a paragraph, close the page, and the only artefact is a paragraph you will probably never read again. The benefit is supposed to arrive invisibly, over time. That is a fine thing to believe in. It is not a thing that gets me to open the app on a Tuesday evening when I am tired.

So I stopped pretending I was going to journal the conventional way, and thought about what would actually work for me. Something that built up the more I used it. Something I could open and watch take shape. Not a streak counter, not a guilt trip, a journal that was visibly becoming something. Once I framed it that way the problem stopped being about discipline. It was a design problem. The reason I was not journaling was that nobody had built the version of journaling I would have used.

So I built it.

The rule I keep, every time: I only build things I would actually use. If I would not open it, I do not see the point. There is enough technically impressive, personally untouched software in the world. ThinkWell is journaling designed by someone who could never get journaling to stick, for the exact reasons it never stuck. Every decision in the app gets measured against one question. Would this make me want to open it tomorrow.

Olivia helped me build it, and she came up with the name. ThinkWell. I would not have arrived at it on my own, and I am telling you it was hers because she should get credit for the bits that are good.

That is the entire origin story. More here as the app and I figure each other out.