When we started researching #memory, one thing became clear: people save personal information in many different ways, but almost all of them are workarounds. We improvise around imperfect systems until we get results that are good enough.
It could be a contact we want to keep and later struggle to find. A text file. A document. The warranty for a car or an appliance. An invoice. An email. A link.
When we need that information again, we usually follow a trail of clues.
Take a dishwasher technician someone recommended to us. We probably saved their number in Contacts, but instead of entering their actual first and last name, as the software expects, we might save them as something like Dishwasher technician - recommended by Ethan.
We do this because we already know that when the day comes to find that person again, their real name will be useless to us. What we'll remember is who they are to us.
A warranty might be buried somewhere in our email. To find it, we might search for the name of the company that issued it - assuming we happen to remember that name.
Technology can help. An email app can search inside messages. AI can perform semantic searches and understand more about what we're looking for. But the underlying problem remains. Finding our own information is still a surprisingly imperfect process. We depend on clues, our memory, and whatever search technology happens to be available.
During our research, we noticed something else.
There are people for whom finding their information is important enough that they refuse to compromise. They build systems inside systems. They develop naming conventions, folder structures, tags, shortcuts, special apps, and personal rules. They keep experimenting until they find something that works for them.
And then they stick with it.
They've essentially built their own retrieval system on top of tools that were never really designed around how they remember.
Everyone else has two choices: fight to find their information again every time they need it, or eventually stop saving much of it in the first place.
#memory was built for both groups.
For people who have already spent years developing their own systems, switching can be difficult. They've invested time and effort into making those systems work. But what we've found is that once people start using #memory, the process of saving and finding information becomes much faster and more natural.