Malcolm, explain Intend right now, in one breath, standing on one foot

a rapid-fire summary of how the Intend app works

My friend Visa challenged his friends to explain their thing rapid-fire style, and I have several things but one of them is this app, which I’m pretty good at spontaneously summarizing (I’m a hit at parties) but I’ve maybe never written up such a summary. So here goes!

• Most to-do list systems are broken. Every to-do list system says that and claims theirs is better, but largely they fail to get outside of the basic clichéd concept of what a to-do list is even for. (hint: it’s for your one wild and precious life)

• Specifically, most to-do lists start with the premise that the thing you need to do is manage giant lists of things. This is true in some contexts—if, for instance, your literal job description includes “manage someone else’s giant list and ensure every item gets done”—but in general the bigger challenge for most creatives, entrepreneurs, feral free agents, and knowledge workers is keeping focused on what matters and not bogged down with busywork, and the meta-task of wrangling to-dos generally ends up being busywork.

• Intend begins instead with the question of “what matters to you?” which it currently calls “goals” but they don’t need to be SMART goals or whatever they can just be meaningful futures you’re moving towards or areas of your life that you feel stoked when you think about them. The point is that it’s about what YOU care about.

• Then every day Intend asks you “What are you doing today towards what matters most to you?” and you write in a list of things. This looks like a typical “to-do list” but it makes a huge difference that the list is just for today, because it means that it’s not a giant pile of stuff that you already KNOW you’re never going to get to most of. It’s a (somewhat, at least) realistic list of things you’re actually intending to do today. Maybe drawn from some other bigger list, maybe just off the top of your head!

• At the end of the day Intend checks in and asks what actually happened, which is both a chance to check off items that you intended, and also a chance to notice “hey wait, I didn’t plan on this serendipitous encounter with Bob at the cafe where we got talking about a collaboration, but that’s actually by far the most important thing that happened towards this goal today!” Those count too! And it’s a chance to notice what didn’t happen and reflect on that.

• And then all those things you didn’t do… they don’t go on your list for tomorrow. They stay put on the list of things you intended to do yesterday. You start with a blank slate again. Just because you intended to do it yesterday doesn’t mean you still intend to do it today. You can choose to grab it and intend it again, but that’s a conscious step, not an automatic rollover. This keeps your list in line with your actual intentions, rather than having it be bullshit and wishful thinking and onerous obligations.

• That’s the basic core workflow. In addition to that daily review, there’s also weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly reviews, but unlike GTD-based systems where things pile up and go moldy if you skip your weekly review, in Intend the reviews are bonus—an augmentation to a workflow that’s totally functional already. And they’re easy! For each goal/theme, you get to see an overview of what you did that week/month, and other recent reviews, and then you do some big picture thinking about where you’re headed and what’s most important now.

• There are also other anti-staleness features like the Now Page, where you can’t plan in advance at all you can just say “this is what I’m doing now” and “hey I did an extra thing” and “hmm I’m actually gonna stop working on this and do that instead”.

• And during the day when you’re working, you get a pomodoro timer or an hourglass timer and you can log the work blocks on the intentions. And there are coworking rooms with sync’d timers, which are great if you like company or “body doubling” while working, plus you get to chat during the breaks without getting distracted for hours.

• It’s about intentionality, not productivity.

You can try the app for yourself at intend.do, or comment below with questions you have and I’ll be happy to answer them. (Or if you use the app yourself, do you think my summary missed anything important?)