Due for review todayThe obstacle is information · MeditationsDay 3

Replace doomscrolling
with microlearning.

Five ideas a day from books, essays, talks and research. The ones you keep come back until they are yours.

Five minutes a day. It ends when the five are done.

How it works

Meditations

Marcus Aurelius

Ideas12

Per idea~1 min

What it is

Private notebooks, never intended for publication, in which the most powerful man in the world talks himself into behaving decently. The appeal is the unfinished quality: the same lessons appear again and again because he kept failing at them.

Its ideas

  1. Separate the event from your verdict on it
  2. The obstacle is information
  3. You will be dead, which is oddly clarifying
  4. Do the next right thing, then stop
  5. Nobody does wrong on purpose, in their own view
  6. Judge yourself by your effort, not the reception

Meditations

The obstacle is information

A blocked path tells you something about the terrain.

Don’t just read it. Keep it.

Mindroll pulls the ideas out of books like Meditations, about a minute each, and brings back the ones you save until they stick.

Five a day, then you’re done.

A session has a last page. No feed underneath it, nothing that loads when you reach the bottom.

One idea, kept.

You just took in a core idea from Meditations. It comes back after 1, 3, 7, 16 and 35 days, until it is yours. That is Mindroll.

88
sources
616
ideas
14
topics

Name one idea from the last book you finished.

Take your time.

What survives the week.

Not how much you read.

Most people cannot name one, and it is not a failure of attention or intelligence. You read it once, at the pace of a page, and nothing ever asked you about it again. That is the part Mindroll fixes.

What you get

Eight things the app does. No others, and none of them a roadmap item.

  • A feed built from your answers

    Topics, a goal, a daily length, and the books you already meant to read. Not from what keeps you scrolling.

  • The argument, not the headline

    Every card gives you the claim, why it holds, and something to try. Open “Go deeper” when one lands.

  • Spaced review

    Only what you save enters review, and a session is capped so it always ends. Seven a day, maximum.

  • Listen to any of it

    Every idea narrated, with background playback and lock-screen controls. Pro.

  • Download for offline

    Keep ideas and audio on the phone for a flight or a tunnel. Pro.

  • Scan a book you own

    Point the camera at a cover or a barcode and Mindroll finds its ideas. The barcode is read on your device and no photograph is uploaded.

  • A library that is yours

    Save ideas, sort them into collections, and keep the notes and reflections you wrote against them.

  • Analytics off unless you say otherwise

    Usage analytics are off by default and stay off until you turn them on. Card details never reach us: Apple handles payment.

The whole shelf

Works out of copyright, read end to end and summarised in our own words. The covers are the books’ own, so the shelf here is the shelf in the app.

  • Clear thinking 30
  • Psychology 32
  • Habits 21
  • Productivity 13
  • Attention 13
  • Money 15
  • Career 19
  • Leadership 19
  • Communication 24
  • Relationships 14
  • Health 11
  • Science 11
  • History 19
  • Philosophy 18
  • Cover of “The Richest Man in Babylon” by George S. Clason
  • Cover of “How to Live on 24 Hours a Day” by Arnold Bennett
  • Cover of “Self-Help” by Samuel Smiles
  • Cover of “As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen
  • Cover of “The Gospel of Wealth” by Andrew Carnegie
  • Cover of “My Life and Work” by Henry Ford
  • Cover of “Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington
  • Cover of “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace D. Wattles
  • Cover of “The Power of Concentration” by Theron Q. Dumont
  • Cover of “The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie” by Andrew Carnegie
  • Cover of “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius
  • Cover of “On the Shortness of Life” by Seneca
  • Cover of “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau
  • Cover of “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu
  • Cover of “Nicomachean Ethics” by Aristotle
  • Cover of “The Principles of Psychology” by William James
  • Cover of “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” by Benjamin Franklin
  • Cover of “Essays” by Michel de Montaigne
  • Cover of “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith
  • Cover of “The Enchiridion” by Epictetus
  • Cover of “Novum Organum” by Francis Bacon
  • Cover of “The Prince” by Niccolò Machiavelli
  • Cover of “The Chemical History of a Candle” by Michael Faraday
  • Cover of “On the Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin
  • Cover of “Science and Hypothesis” by Henri Poincaré
  • Cover of “Lombard Street” by Walter Bagehot
  • Cover of “The Theory of the Leisure Class” by Thorstein Veblen
  • Cover of “Parallel Lives” by Plutarch
  • Cover of “The Melian Dialogue” by Thucydides
  • Cover of “Tao Te Ching” by Laozi
  • Cover of “The Analects” by Confucius
  • Cover of “On Liberty” by John Stuart Mill
  • Cover of “The Republic” by Plato
  • Cover of “Beyond Good and Evil” by Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Cover of “The Interpretation of Dreams” by Sigmund Freud
  • Cover of “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine
  • Cover of “Democracy in America” by Alexis de Tocqueville
  • Cover of “The Souls of Black Folk” by W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Cover of “Leviathan” by Thomas Hobbes

Plans

The free plan is not a demo. You can read the whole catalogue on it, for as long as you like.

Free

No card, no trial to forget

  • Five personalised ideas a day
  • The whole catalogue to read
  • Spaced review on what you save
  • Up to 50 saved ideas and 3 collections
  • 30 days of reading history

Mindroll Pro3 days free

Two ways to pay. Cancel any time.

Subscribe here and it works in the app: the same account, no App Store needed.

  • AnnualBest value

    $89.99 a year

    3 days free, then $89.99 a year, about $1.73 a week.

  • Weekly

    $19.99 a week

    Billed every week. Cancel any time.

  • Everything in Free, plus:
  • Every idea narrated, with background playback
  • Downloads for offline
  • Unlimited saves and collections
  • History with no cut-off
  • Progress insights: what you actually retain
  • No sponsored cards

Billed by Apple in the app, by us on this website. Cancel any time: in your Apple account for the first, from your account page for the second. A cancelled subscription runs to the end of the period you paid for. Everything in Pro · Terms · Privacy

Questions

Is this a book summary app?

No, and the distinction matters. A summary compresses a book so you can say you have read it. Mindroll takes one idea at a time, keeps the argument that makes it true, and then asks you about it again days later. You will finish fewer books here and remember considerably more of them.

Does this replace reading the book?

It is not meant to. Half of what it is good for is telling you which book is worth your next month. You read one idea from it before committing to four hundred pages. Every source is named, so going to the original is always one tap away.

What is actually in it?

88 sources (39 of them books, the rest articles, podcasts, talks, essays and research), broken into 616 ideas across 14 topics. All of it is either out of copyright and summarised in our own words, or written for this app. Every item carries its licence and the date it was last checked.

How does the review actually work?

Only ideas you save enter review, because saving is you saying that one mattered. A saved idea comes back after one day, then three, then seven, then sixteen, then thirty-five. You answer one of two things: you remember it, or remind me. Forgetting sends it back to the start, and a review session is capped at seven so it always ends.

Will it work without a signal?

Reading works offline once the day has loaded. Downloading ideas and audio to keep permanently on the device is part of Pro.

What do you collect about me?

What the app needs to give you a personalised plan and remember your progress: your onboarding answers, what you read and save, and your subscription status. Usage analytics are off until you turn them on. We never see your card details, we do not sell anything about you, and the whole of it is set out in the privacy policy.

How do I cancel?

Wherever you bought it. Through the App Store, it is your Apple account settings, in two taps, exactly like every other App Store subscription. We are not involved and cannot be a reason it fails. Bought here with a card, it is the "manage subscription" link on your account page. Either way you keep Pro until the period you have paid for runs out.

Five minutes, and something left over.

Swap one scroll for one idea that is still there on Thursday.