Intend
Be in purposeful flow 10 minutes from now
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
— Mary Oliver
Connect what you're doing each day to your bigger picture.
Get started in minutes!
- 💼 get a job
- 💸 create passive income
- 💯 get better grades
- ✍️ write every day
- 💪 get in shape
- 🎓 finish their PhD
- 😌 nurture their mental health
- 🧑🎤 record an album
- 💼 get a job
What will you achieve this year? We can help.
Have you noticed? Productivity systems go stale. You feel like you're in control for a bit, but it turns out the more you do, the more there is to do—you can never really get on top of it. To-do lists pile up, and become less and less relevant to your actual high-value next actions, which makes you not want to use your lists because the tasks are mostly garbage. Meanwhile, it's hard to remember what you're actually trying to accomplish.
Instead of productivity, we focus on intentionality. It's not about how much you do, but about knowing why you're doing what you're doing, seeing dreams come to life, and having fun while you're doing it. Here are Intend's four principles for getting into flow and staying in touch with what matters to you:
- choosing & doing, over organizing
- aliveness, instead of exhaustiveness
- goals as fundamental, rather than tasks
- proactive, rather than reactive
Read more about the Intend Philosophy
Or, keep reading to learn more about the app and how it can help you:
What do you want?
Most people are afraid of that question. But nobody else can answer it for you.
Intend helps you clarify what motivates you and stay in touch with it over time as it evolves.
Have you tried throwing it out?
Some things are worth forgetting.
The most important thing to do is probably not even on your list.
Intend keeps things fresh with a new list of intentions every day.
Your wins won't celebrate themselves
You probably accomplish more than you think—you just never stop to notice!
Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually, Intend shows you your progress towards your goals, allowing you to visualize success and learn from setbacks.
Here's the next step:
Want to work directly with our coaches to clarify your goals, planning, or prioritizing?
Join us online early January for some guidance on how to get the most out of your year!
(We've been running this event for years and it's not just boring zoom lectures, but a personalized container for doing meaningful thinking using choose-your-own-adventure exercises and live 1-on-1 chat-based coaching.)
We asked our users what they’re most proud of...
"I had goals to work on my personal image and apply to faculty jobs and I got a tenure track position!"
"I've changed jobs to become a computer programmer, from a completely non-technical background. Seeing tasks linked to my goal in colourful letters every day helped more than anything to keep making incremental progress."
"So I have some social anxiety and doing-stuff-with-other-people issues. Intend helped me to regularly think about what I want to do next week or month. Like making that doctor's appointment or asking friends out to do something. And then actually implementing all the steps needed to achieve that."
"I have severe executive dysfunction, because I'm autistic with ADHD and anxiety, so it's hard for me to start tasks, remember what I'm supposed to do, or even be aware of where my day is going – especially now that I don't at least have college keeping me on track. Every other to-do app has made me overwhelmed. Intend helps me break down big goals into 'this specific small thing I can/should do today.'"
"With Intend's help, I was diligent in MBA applications and ultimately earned entry to my dream school!"
"With Intend, I wrote more, exercised more and learned more. Specifically, I went from dreaming about writing blog posts to having a blog with 15 solid posts that have stood the test of time."
"One of my favourite things about Intend is that it keeps me up-to-date with my accountability buddy (who is also my long distance partner). Is "better communication in our relationship" a thing I can note here?"
"Sticking to daily actions that help me achieve important goals, such as working out regularly and connecting with people I love."
"I'm running a £1.5M business, growing at 50% per year, recruiting 10 trainers... Intend has given me a 5x increase in productivity, by helping me focus on what's really important. Life before Intend was very stressful and chaotic, but I'm actually creating clear time to think now. I've never seen that before."
"Intend helped me bring in an additional $269K in business to my agency. I'm an engineer not a biz dev guy but with Intend's framework to put in small but daily efforts I was able to find new clients!"
"Setting up durable high-level goals that accurately reflect both where I want to be in the future, and what I can make happen today. (I'm also proud of keeping up the daily efforts for the past several months.)"
"Intend has been incredibly useful in building a durable daily writing habit. The Beeminder integration makes capturing data easy and the "don't break the chain" setup the timeline page has is a powerful incentive to write everyday."
Writing — learn about intentionality...
Intentionality, not productivity
“Productivity” is not up to the job. The concept of “productivity” was invented in the late 1800s as a frame for measuring standardized output among laborers all doing the same job. ...continue reading...
Try Thinking of Your Goals as Dimensions
“You have where you are, and you have where you want to be (roughly), and your goals can describe the directions you’ll need to travel in order to get to where you want to be.” ...continue reading...
The Intend Philosophy
“The main paradigmatic differences of Intend, compared to GTD-based systems are as follows: choosing & doing, over organizing; aliveness, instead of exhaustiveness; goals as fundamental, rather than tasks; proactive, rather than reactive” ...continue reading...
What are you going to do right now?
Maybe you want to sign up for Intend. Maybe you want to do something else. The choice is up to you. Our deal is that we're going to encourage you to do it intentionally.
Because hey, this could be a chance to step back and do something that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Maybe even to make some adjustments to your life trajectory! So it could be a missed opportunity if you just closed the tab and went into some sort of autopilot mode.
Your options are endless, but if that's daunting, here are a few that might be good next steps:
Make an Intend account
Grok the Intend Philosophy first
Just get to work right now
Give me a text box to think in
Writing is a great way to get clarity. Here’s a box where you can type out what’s on your mind: