Outline Your Essays at the Speed of Thought
In the last two months we gathered a group of 100 authors pioneering the next generation thinking and writing tool. The progress is exciting.
At its heart Napkin provides one infinite room to each writer to collect and connect all inspiring thoughts and ideas they come across. There are no pages and folders. Instead there is just one “swarm of thought” inviting the authors to browse and discover connections and combinations of ideas. The dynamic interface is inspired by the human mind. Just focus one thought and see associated thoughts resurfaced automatically.
Whenever an interesting thought combination arises, simply drag and drop them to a “stack”. Stacks are collections of thoughts you create, aiming at a particular output, e.g. the next blog post, newsletter, twitter thread.
Within a stack you can rearrange thoughts via drag and drop, create sections and add notes. Once you feel it’s time to go from outlining to writing, just copy the entire stack to the writing tool of your choice. Preferences vary largely here from MS Word to Ulysses to Typeshare. Therefore we went for a simple and universal solution compatible with all tools already loved by writers.
This week we will release two features that make thought collection easier. The first one is a browser extension. The clipping tool will let you highlight text on any webpage and send it to your Napkin (yes, you can also open Notion or Roam in a browser). The second one is an iOS app that gives you the same comfort on your iPhone and iPad.
Want to try it yourself? Sign up!
