I've got the app, now how do I get started?
Finding your way around
Open maxamind and you land on the home screen: your Alerts, Inbox, Projects, Contexts, Journal, Sketchpad, Datapad and References — each one tappable, each showing a count of what's inside. Above the list, a Quick Capture bar is always sitting there ready for input. Below it, a Now/Soon panel surfaces whatever's urgent or coming up soon so you won't miss it.
That's the whole starting layout: quick capture at the top, your records in the middle, what's time-sensitive at the bottom. The rest of this guide walks through what a few of those records — Inbox, Projects and Contexts, Journal, Whiteboard — can do for you.
Start with Inbox
Inbox is where anything goes when you haven't decided what it is yet — a task, a link, a half-formed thought you don't want to lose. You don't need a project or a category to use it. You just need somewhere to put things down so your head doesn't have to hold them.
Give things a place when you're ready
Projects and Contexts exist for when a task needs more structure than "someday I should deal with this." A project groups related tasks toward an outcome. A context is about where or how you'll do the work — at your desk, on the phone, the next time you talk with Jim. Neither is mandatory. You can leave things in Inbox and with a Context of Anywhere indefinitely; maxamind won't nag you to organize before you're ready to.
Watch it show up in your journal
Add a task or two — from Inbox, from a project, wherever — then open the journal view and land on today's page. If you've used a bullet journal before, the shapes in the left margin will look familiar: a dash marks a plain note, the circle bullet marks something you're tracking as an action. Everything you captured elsewhere already has a line here, dated to when you touched it.
The reverse works too. Tap the notepad page for today and start typing — whatever you jot down starts life as a plain note. If it turns out to actually be something you need to do, tap its dash bullet and change it to an action right from the pop-up. Nothing about it needs to be decided upfront; the journal doesn't ask you to know what a line is before you write it.
Think visually when text isn't enough
Some things don't fit neatly into a task list — a plan with branches, a rough diagram, a way of seeing how pieces connect. The sketchpad and whiteboard view are there for that. Tap a shape to select it, tap it again to bring up actions like adding a note or connecting it to something else. It's built to be quick with a finger or a mouse, not a separate app you have to context-switch into.
Let the AI assistant do the typing
The built-in AI Assistant can create tasks, sketch nodes, or pull up your projects and contexts directly from a plain-language request — you don't need to know where something lives to ask for it. If you ask it something about how the app works, it'll give you a direct answer and point you back to the right screen. If you bring it real work — planning, thinking something through — it'll stay with you across the conversation.
Your data stays yours
Everything syncs across your devices automatically, but you're never locked into that. A full JSON export is available anytime, and the app can run from a static backup with no server at all if you ever want to step away from syncing. Convenience and ownership aren't a trade-off here — you get both.
Where to go next
There's no required order after this. Some people start by dumping everything into Inbox for a few days before organizing anything. Others set up two or three projects right away. If you eventually find yourself wanting a deeper framework for organizing all of it, David Allen's Getting Things Done is a natural next step — but it's not something you need to read before you start.
For the full walkthrough of Actions, Projects, Contexts, the Journal, and everything else — including how the AI Assistant works and how your data stays yours — see the Quickstart guide.
For now: open Inbox, write a few things down, glance at today's journal page, and poke around at whatever catches your eye. The best way to learn what's here is to tap things and see what happens — nothing you try will break anything.