The eleven frameworks

The Goal Cascade is the spine of the app. It says: every today-sized task should trace upward to a year-sized goal, which traces upward to a five-year vision, which traces upward to your purpose, which sits on your values. Each level inherits from the one above.

If you change something at a higher level, the lower levels go stale until you reconfirm them. The app shows this with an amber dot on the stepper called the upstream-change ripple.

Where it shows up

The Execute step has five sub-tabs (Year/Quarter/Month/Week/Day) that are the cascade-in-time. Same shape, smaller and smaller time units.

Score every life area today on a 0-10 slider, then mark two or three as focus areas for the year. The unscored areas are not abandoned, they just do not get Summit Goals this year.

The map gives the app a way to refuse to overplan. A user trying to set Summit Goals in seven areas at once gets a soft warning. Three is the cap.

Where it shows up

Instead of asking "what are your goals," the Vision Interview asks "what does an honest 5-year version of your life look like, written in present tense, as if you are already there." The shift from prescriptive (what should I do?) to descriptive (what would actually feel right?) unsticks people who freeze when asked to plan.

The app prompts you with one short paragraph and a single text field. You can write up to three (see Three Futures next).

Where it shows up

Write three plausible alternate five-year futures. They share your values and your focus areas but differ in the path:

• Plan A compounds what is already working.
• Plan B is the bridge: different but reachable, uncomfortable one year out.
• Plan C is the deliberate stretch: the one your safest self would never choose.

You pick one to make active. The other two are not deleted; they sit as comparison surfaces during quarterly check-ins. Classroom and coaching evidence shows the comparison dramatically outperforms imagining a single future. Most people's "default" plan is the safest one. The comparison surfaces what they actually want.

Where it shows up

Same Vision step as above (T2A). The three tabs are how you toggle between plans. The active plan becomes load-bearing metadata: it stamps a key (A/B/C), framing, picked-at timestamp, and last-reconfirmed timestamp. Every later surface (Summit Goals, Quarter Check-in, the Insights coach, the Annual Wrap-up) adapts its prompts to whichever plan is active.

A Summit Goal is one big-enough goal per focus area. It is:

• Outcome-shaped. Describes the destination, not the activity.
• Dated. Has a target year-month, usually 12-36 months out.
• Defensible. If a friend asked "how will you know you got there?" you have an answer.

Locke & Latham's research shows specific and difficult goals outperform vague or easy ones. The Summit is the highest-altitude version of that finding, calibrated to one or two life-changing outcomes per year rather than a dozen quarterly KPIs.

Naming the goal a Summit is not decoration. Summits have altitude (a target date a year or more out), a route (the milestones cascading from the year plan), basecamp (the quarterly milestones where you stop, rest, reassess), and weather (the obstacles in the Goal Plan that can turn back a strong climber on the wrong day). If your Summit reads as a single bullet point with no altitude, no route, no basecamp, it is a hill, not a Summit. Hills are fine; they just do not need this whole apparatus.

Where it shows up

A Goal Plan turns a Summit Goal into something tractable. For each Summit, you sketch:

• The wish: the outcome you want (your Summit, restated).
• The outcome: what changes in your life if you achieve it.
• The obstacles: the friction that has stopped you before. Real and specific.
• The plan: if-then statements that route around each obstacle.

The "if-then" structure is implementation intention research: people who specify when and where they will act follow through 2-3x more often than people who just intend to act.

Where it shows up

Same Summit Goals step (T2B). Under each Summit there is an expandable Goal Plan section with the four fields above. The quarterly check-in rereads the obstacles + if-then list.

Twelve weeks is short enough to feel finite, long enough to ship something real. The app's Execute step centers on a Focus Quarter: pick 3-5 milestones from your year plan that belong to the current 12-week block, then break those down into month, week, and day priorities.

At the end of the quarter, you do a Quarter Check-in: reread the active vision, decide if the Summit Goals still pull, and set the next 12-week focus. This rhythm replaces the annual-only review most people fail at.

Where it shows up

Every habit in the Habit Garden has three slots:

• Trigger: the time or context that fires the habit. "Right after my morning coffee." "When I close the laptop at 5pm."
• Action: the smallest version of the behavior. "Lace up and step outside" not "go for a 10k."
• Reward: the immediate good feeling that closes the loop. Often as small as marking the habit done in the Habit Garden.

The point of writing the trigger explicitly is that habits do not stick on willpower. They stick on context. Wiring the trigger to a thing you already do every day (coffee, laptop close, bedtime) borrows reliability from an existing behavior.

Where it shows up

Miss one day, you are human. Miss two days in a row, you are quietly building a new habit (the habit of not doing it). The two-day rule says: never miss the same habit two days in a row. One slip is a rest day; two slips is a problem.

The app watches your habit log. If a habit goes two consecutive scheduled days unchecked, it flags it in the Insights view with a gentle nudge, not a guilt-trip.

Where it shows up

Each milestone gets a Red / Amber / Green dot:

• Green: on track. No intervention needed.
• Amber: at risk. A small course-correction now prevents Red later.
• Red: off track. Needs a decision: rescue, reschedule, or retire.

The honest use of Amber is the key. Amber is what catches drift early. The temptation is to color everything Green until the deadline hits, then jump to Red. The monthly check-in reviews every milestone's traffic light and asks "is this still Green, or am I being polite to myself?"

Where it shows up

Execute step (Year and Quarter views) milestone rows have a small dot toggle. The Insights coach surfaces Reds first when you open the Insights view.

For every habit, you define a "lazy day" version: the smallest acceptable action when the full habit is not feasible. For a 30-minute run, the lazy day might be "10-minute walk + 5 push-ups." For a 1,000-word writing session, the lazy day might be "200-word voice memo."

The lazy day is the difference between "I missed today" (which becomes a streak-killer) and "I shrunk today" (which keeps the rhythm). It also makes the two-day rule actually work: you can almost always do the lazy version, even on the worst day.

Where it shows up

Each habit row in the Habit Garden (T4A) has a lazy-day field. Checking the lazy version counts as a completed habit, not a missed day. The Insights view's streak counter treats both as a "kept" day.