Experience needs a record
A week without notes is a rumour you tell yourself later. A rating and a couple of sentences become a record you can actually learn from: meetings, projects, and the weeks in between.
The story
Why this exists
I built My Reflections because structured self-reflection changed my life. I rebuilt it so the habit would survive a real evening. The work I care about is apps and services that can genuinely change how people live.
Consistency is the hard part
If you are not already self-aware, you need a prompt. The prompt builds the awareness, and the awareness makes the next note easier. Consistency is the hard part. That is the part the app takes care of.
The loop compounds
We develop through actions, observations and reflections. The more cycles you run, the faster knowledge and effectiveness compound. Two minutes is enough to keep the loop alive.
Why I started
I built My Reflections because I am living the results of structured, consistent self-reflection today, and I know there are people who could benefit from it. A lot of people.
From the 2021 note on why this began
For years I reflected at work without calling it that. Project reviews. Retrospectives. Tiny adjustments so the next decision was better than the last. Then I had to use the same tool on my own life, and that is when it stopped being a professional habit and became the way I stayed honest with myself.
2016, and after
I was missing the thing that mattered most
From the outside it looked complete. A job I loved, a house by the beach, travel, long hours. At a family event, a well-meaning question assumed I did not have children because I did not want them yet. That small assumption named the thing I had buried: I could not see a path to being a dad, on terms I could live with.
Hoping and waiting was not a plan. Structured reflection, every morning with coffee and a notes app, is how I stopped dwelling on what-ifs and started choosing. Within three months I had changed work, left a life that was not going to get me there, moved to Manila, and started the MBA I had been putting off. It took me to Ericka, to Jaxon, and later Ethan.
I sleep better. I work with people I believe in. I am the kind of father I wanted to be able to be.
I combined two things I care about, reflection and software, so other people could keep a practice like that without inventing it from scratch.
The longer version, in my own wordsThe rebuild
Capture has to win the first five seconds
The first My Reflections was a web app I could ship and live in. It proved the model. It also proved that if writing a note is buried, you will close the app and tell yourself you will come back later. You will not.
The native rebuild is organised around that truth. Today, Insights, Capture. Same actions, observations and reflections underneath. Less friction on top. Deep dives instead of a weekly black box. Groups that are rooms, not another feed. Private until you share.
The habit has to work on the evening you cannot be bothered. That is the whole product argument.
How Today, Insights and Capture fit together
Who I am
Chris Winfield-Blum
I grew up in Adelaide. Two decades in software, operations and leadership, still building in the evenings after my regular job. Father, partner, MBA graduate, and the person who will talk at length about coffee and how teams actually work.
What I care about is simple. I want to build apps and services that genuinely have the potential to change people’s lives. That is where my motivation sits. I have taught the practice too: a structured self-reflection workshop in a room of 200, because this is learnable, not a personality trait. The rest of the journal, the work, and the travel is on winfieldblum.com.
Start tonight. It takes two minutes.
Reflecting is free, on iPhone and the web. Professional has a 7-day trial.