In My Head In My Head

A Real Talk on In My Head In My Head

I ran into In My Head In My Head while looking for a simple way to map out ideas without getting bogged down in complicated software. Most people who stumble across it expect some polished app with a download button, and that is basically the honest truth — there is no app store listing, no official website with a clean onboarding flow, nothing like that. It exists mostly as a concept and a scattered collection of notes, templates, and workflow diagrams that float around forums, GitHub gists, and personal blogs. The core idea is straightforward. You take a thought, break it into components, and then lay those components out visually so you can see where they connect. I used it for about three months on a project where I was trying to structure a series of interconnected blog posts, and it worked okay for that. The problem is figuring out where to actually get started because nobody seems to agree on a single source of truth for it.

Where In My Head In My Head Actually Lives

If you search for In My Head In My Head, you will find a handful of pages. There is a GitHub repository that someone maintains with a basic template file. There are Reddit threads from people describing their own implementation. There is also a YouTube video from 2021 that shows a whiteboard workflow, which is probably the closest thing to an official tutorial that exists. None of these are authoritative. They are all just people sharing what they figured out on their own. The template on GitHub is a Markdown file. It is not impressive but it does the job. It has sections for the core idea, supporting arguments, counterpoints, and open questions. I cloned it, filled in my content, and then exported it to a PDF so I could print it out and actually work with it on paper. That print step matters more than most people realize. Looking at it on a screen feels abstract. Looking at it on paper forces you to confront gaps in your logic.

How to Actually Use It Without Getting Stuck

Here is what I did, and it took me about two days to get the hang of it. First, you open a blank document. Write the main idea at the top in one sentence. If you cannot do that, you are not ready to use this method yet and you should spend more time just thinking before you start writing anything down. Next, list the supporting points. Three to five is the range that works. I tried seven once and the whole thing became unreadable. After that, write the counterpoints. This is where most people skip ahead because it feels uncomfortable, but skipping it defeats the entire purpose. The point is not to confirm what you already believe. The point is to pressure-test it. Then the open questions section. This is where you list everything you are unsure about. It sounds simple but it is the part that actually saves you time later. I spent two weeks on a project once because I skipped this step and then realized halfway through that my core assumption was wrong. If I had written it down in the open questions section, I would have caught it in a day.

I also found that working with a partner on this was significantly better than doing it alone. Someone else will immediately spot the weak points in your logic that you are too invested to see. I had a colleague go through my In My Head In My Head document and within ten minutes she pointed out that two of my supporting arguments were actually the same point in different words. That saved me from a structural problem I would have discovered much later.

The Parts Nobody Talks About

The method works best when your idea is in that transitional space between vague and fully formed. If it is too vague, you will fill the template with filler content and end up with nothing useful. If it is too fully formed, you are not actually thinking — you are just documenting what you already decided. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle, where you have a direction but you are not sure about the details. There is also a time limit that helps. I found that giving myself forty-five minutes to complete the full document kept me honest. Without that constraint, I would spend three hours polishing the wording of individual sections and never actually finish. The first draft is supposed to be rough. That is the point. One edge case I ran into is when you are dealing with a topic that has a lot of technical depth. I tried applying the method to a subject involving statistical regression models, and the template fell apart because the counterpoints and open questions sections were not designed to handle that level of detail. What I did was create a separate appendix document and link to it from the main template. That worked well enough, but it is worth noting that this is not a universal method. It has a clear boundary.

Another issue is that the method assumes you have a topic you can actually commit to. If you are exploring something completely new and you do not yet know what you think about it, In My Head In My Head will frustrate you. I hit that wall twice in the first month. The workaround is to switch to a free-form brainstorming session first — just dump everything on the page without structure — and only after you have a rough shape to the topic do you move it into the template.

Alternatives Worth Considering

If this method does not click for you, there are other options. Zettelkasten is the closest alternative and it has a much larger community and more resources. Mind mapping tools like Obsidian with the Canvas plugin also cover similar ground with a more visual approach. If your thinking process is highly visual, those might serve you better than the text-heavy template that In My Head In My Head uses. The advantage of In My Head In My Head is its simplicity. It requires no special software, no subscription, no learning curve beyond reading a template once. That is also its disadvantage. The lack of structure is both its strength and its limitation. It will not save you from bad thinking, and it will not organize complex multi-layered projects the way a proper knowledge management system might. For a one-off project or a single article or a decision you need to make, it is adequate. For building a long-term knowledge base, you should look elsewhere. I keep coming back to it because it is fast and it gets out of the way, but I do not treat it as the only tool I have. It is one tool among several, and that is how it should be used.