User guide

1. What this app is

The companion app is a guided, browser-based version of the Life Goals Workbook (29 pages, 4 phases, 11 reusable templates). It walks you through every template the workbook contains, from picking your top 5 values to checking off today's habits, and it does the bookkeeping for you so you spend your time thinking, not formatting cells.

Everything runs in your browser. Your plan stays on your device. Nothing is sent to a server I control unless you explicitly connect Dropbox sync.

You should still read the workbook PDF at least once. The workbook explains the why behind each template. The app handles the what and the when.

2. Getting in: the password gate

When you open the app, you land on the unlock screen. Two ways forward:

• Unlock with your Beta password. The password came in the welcome email from Goals and Progress. Type it, tick "Remember on this device" if you trust the device, and click Unlock.
• Try the demo first. Click "Try the demo" on the right to explore the full app with sample data (a fictional user, Maya Chen, with several years of plans, goals, and habit history). You can leave demo mode at any time and your real plan is untouched.

The gate exists for one reason: this is a paid product in beta, and the gate keeps it that way. There is no server-side account, no email-and-password, no analytics tied to you. The password is a SHA-256 hash check that runs locally. If you forget yours, search your inbox for the welcome email from Goals and Progress, or email support@goalsandprogress.com.

After you unlock for the first time, a short welcome tour walks you through what the app is. It asks for your first name right on the first page (that is the only "signup" there is, and it stays on your device), then shows the journey ahead. In the stepper, steps you have not reached yet look dimmed; clicking one tells you plainly which step unlocks it, so the path is always visible but never confusing.

3. The 90-minute first session

The workbook calls this the Initial Assessment: a one-time, all-life-areas pass that gives you a foundation. After this, you only ever revisit it once or twice a year.

Block 90 quiet minutes. Tea, no phone, no Slack. Sit through these in order:

1. Values (about 5 min)
2. Purpose (about 5 min)
3. Life Areas (about 8 min)
4. Vision (about 12 min)
5. Summit Goals (about 2 min base + 6 min per goal)
6. Annual goals inside Execute (about 2 min base + 8 min per goal)
7. Quarter, month, week, day plans (cascade, fast: 2-4 min each)
8. Pick 1 to 3 habits to track for the year

The app shows a live time estimate at the top of each step, scaled to how many focus areas you have set up. Trust it. The estimates are calibrated against real testers, not against an "ideal user." You can leave any step half-finished: your plan saves automatically to this browser as you type.

If you only have 30 minutes today, do Values + Purpose + Life Areas. The rest can wait until the weekend.

4. The cascade steps

The stepper across the top of the app shows the steps, in order. Each one feeds the next. One step, Strengths, is optional: skip it or come back to it whenever you like. The last destination, the Wall of Wins, joins the stepper on its own once you have earned your first achievement.

Each step still has a short brief at the top, a work area in the middle, and a "next" prompt at the bottom. The stepper above shows where you are, and you can click any earlier step to jump back and revise.

The Discovery and Planning steps (Values, Strengths, Purpose, Life Areas, Vision, and Goals) are now laid out as a short row of numbered tabs at the top of the step. You move through them left to right. Every tab opens with a one-line intro that says what to do on that tab and why it matters, then the work area sits below. On a phone, the tab strip saves room by showing the tabs you are not on as plain numbers and spelling out only the one you are reading.

The last tab on each of these steps is Where this leads. It shows, in your own words and picks, how this step's results feed the later steps: one row per downstream step, each tagged with your real progress (Done, Up next, or Comes later) and a jump link straight to it.

4.1 Values, about 5 minutes

Values has three tabs: Play your hand, Rank your five, and Where this leads.

A values deck of 28 cards, played as a card game. Click Play your hand to start. You see five cards, swap any you do not love for the next card on the deck, and keep going until your final five feel right. Then rank them by dragging. Position 1 (far left) is your North Star: the value you follow when two of them point in different directions.

Why this matters: every later step asks you to make tradeoffs (do I take the promotion, or do I see my kids more?). Your top 5 in rank order is the tiebreaker.

If your values change later, click Restart this step. The whole deck resets.

4.2 Strengths Profile (optional)

An optional strengths check that sits between Values and Purpose. After you rank your Top 5 values, a small popup offers it once; skip it if you like and come back any time. In Essentials mode the step stays out of the way entirely; switch to Full system to see it.

The Strengths Profile has six tabs: Intro, Strengths, Watch-outs, Profile, Backed plans, and Where this leads. Backed plans is where each watch-out's "If [obstacle], then I will [action]" plan can lean on one of your strengths.

It runs in three short parts:

1. Pick your 5 strengths. A word cloud shows strength words. Pick the 5 most like you. The cloud reshuffles every 20 seconds, which keeps your first instincts honest; flip the No time pressure switch if you would rather browse without the clock.
2. Pick your 3 watch-outs. The patterns most likely to get in your own way.
3. Read your profile. The app maps your picks onto 5 science-grounded dimensions (built on the public-domain IPIP Big Five). For each strength you get one concrete action for this week; for each watch-out you get an editable "If [obstacle], then I will [action]" plan.

Sharpen your profile (optional). After the word-cloud rounds you can take a short precision pass: 20 short statements from the public-domain IPIP item pool, about 3 minutes. Your dimension scores then come from those answers (short-scale precision, not a clinical profile), while the words you picked stay your named strengths. If a dimension has no picks and you skip the pass, the app says so plainly ("Not enough signal yet") instead of inventing a result.

What you find here shows up in four places: a small hint above the Purpose builder, a lean-on and watch-out line on your Summit Goals, a "From your strengths" row in the Habit Library, and a quiet nudge in your week plan. Your profile is topped by a headline archetype that sums up your two strongest sides. Everything disappears if you skip the step, and appears if you complete it later.

4.3 Purpose, about 5 minutes

Purpose has two tabs: Craft your purpose and Where this leads.

One sentence on why you do what you do, drawn from your Top 5. The step gives you two ways to write it:

• Option A: Pick a starter sentence. The app drafts three sentences from your Top 5 values. Tap whichever one fits.
• Option B: Craft your own from three pieces. Fill three slots: an action verb (To build), whom this serves (for myself and my family), and the change you want (so that the right people stay safe). The app builds a clean sentence below as you type.

You can revise this sentence at any time. It shows up on your purpose card and on the splash screen, so make it one you want to read every morning.

4.4 Life Areas, about 8 minutes

Life Areas has three tabs: Rate your areas, Choose your focus, and Where this leads.

Rate each life area on two scales: satisfaction (how is it right now, 1 to 10) and importance (how much it matters to you, 1 to 10). The app shows a satisfaction-by-importance map on the right and highlights your two biggest gaps (high importance, low satisfaction). Those gaps are your priority focus areas for the year.

The two scales are color-coded so you can tell them apart at a glance: satisfaction is blue and importance is pink, on the wheel, on the sliders, and on the value chips. On the wheel, the importance line draws as a clear pink outline. The area names around the wheel are buttons: hover shows a pill outline, and clicking a name opens that area's detail.

Each area's detail also has an External factors prompt: note what is in your control here, and what is context you adapt to.

You can add a quick control marker to that note: is this gap mostly yours to move, mixed, or mostly context? When you mark an area as mostly context, its goals shift toward a resilience target: goals about how you respond, not about forcing an outcome you do not control. These notes and markers come back later as hints when you plan each goal's obstacles.

The app offers ten candidate areas: Physical Health, Emotional Wellbeing, Relationships, Career, Financial, Growth & Learning, Fun & Recreation, Purpose & Meaning, Environment, and Contribution.

You can add a custom area if none of the ten fits.

4.5 Vision, about 12 minutes

Vision has three tabs: Three futures, Interview future you, and Where this leads.

The Vision Interview: one unified picture of your life five years from now, in the present tense, sensory, as if it were already true. Your selected focus areas all show up in this single vision (you live one life, not separate ones).

Before you draft the vision, you sketch Three Futures: three plausible 5-year paths.

• Plan A (best of current path). The best version of the path you are already on. Same career, same city, same key relationships, just executed with care over the next five years. If this is the one you want most, that is fine.
• Plan B (pivot). The path you would take if Plan A closed.
• Plan C (no constraints). No money, status, or image limits.

Tap to mark one as your active vision. The active one carries downstream: it frames every Summit Goal you write, appears in every Quarter Check-in re-read, prompts you when goals get stuck in the Insights coach, and comes back every year at the annual wrap-up.

Picking one does not delete the others. They sit in the background as a comparison whenever you do an annual wrap-up.

Your alternate plans stay useful too. If several weeks in a row end with goals off track under your active plan, the Insights coach offers your alternates for a side-by-side re-read instead of telling you to push harder. Re-reading resets the signal; a quiet "Not now" rests it for two weeks. A run of hard weeks becomes a calm moment to compare paths, not a judgement on you.

4.6 Goals: Summit Goals (scales with focus areas)

Goals has two tabs: Set your goals and Where this leads.

For each priority life area, name the highest peak you can see from where you are right now. One bold, dated sentence, 5 to 10 years out, and big enough that saying it out loud feels uncomfortable. The Summit Goal sets the direction every annual goal, quarterly milestone, and weekly priority below it will point toward for the next decade.

This is what the workbook calls a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). The companion app uses the term Summit Goal because the picture is useful: a single peak, visible from where you stand, that you build a route to.

For each focus area, you can:

• Compose your own sentence in the goal card at the bottom.
• Tap one of the starter templates if you are stuck on a blank page.
• Switch your active vision (Plan A / B / C) at any time. The Summit Goal compounds what is already working when you stick with Plan A.

Time estimate scales with how many focus areas you are tackling. Two areas = about 14 minutes. One area = about 8.

Your earlier answers show up on the Summit screen (new in v82). A quiet collapsible strip above the composer carries your five values, your focus areas, your purpose sentence, one line from your future-self interview, and (once you have finished the Strengths Profile) a lean-on and watch-out line for the goal you are writing. Expand it when you want the reminder; it stays out of the way when you do not. This way the summit you write can build on what you discovered, without re-opening four earlier steps.

4.7 Execute: year, quarter, month, week, day

The Goal Cascade in action. Five nested cadences, each one inheriting focus from the level above.

• Year: name your annual goals, up to 3 in total across all areas (the cap keeps your focus narrow; raise it in Settings › Cadence if you truly need more). Each annual goal is one rung down from your Summit. The app supports the Goal Plan pattern: your goal, its Targets (what success looks like, measurably), and your Friction Map (the obstacles that could stop you, each sorted and matched to a counter-move). Each annual goal sits on its own card with three small tabs: The goal, Friction Map, and Milestones. Before your first annual goal, the app asks which year you plan on: the calendar year (January to December, the standard) or your own year, 12 months starting on the next 1st of a month. A year starting in September shows as 2026/27, runs its first quarter September to November, and closes with the annual wrap-up at the end of August. Change it any time under Settings › Cadence › Your year; your entries keep their content, and monthly priorities move with their months.
• Quarter: name a theme for the quarter, then break each annual goal into this quarter's slice. Tick a milestone to commit it, and split a goal you count (say three runs) across the three months. On the Monthly priorities tab, everything you committed waits in a tray you place into each month. A milestone can carry an estimated preparation time (in its expand panel). The Preparing zone sorts by when the work starts rather than when it is due, and the reminder strip tells you when that start is close: a week, three days and a day before, and on the day itself.
• Month: three lanes carried in from the quarter: your main focus (up to two, with room to stretch when the month goes well, or a third when a third genuinely is the point), the milestones due this month, and small goals you keep ticking. New in v82: anything in your lanes that carries a date also appears automatically in a Dated this month strip, tickable there, same object, so nothing is typed twice. The one suggestion button offers your own top priority, and last month's "next month" answer appears at the top.
• Week: your Sunday plan. When a month starts on a weekday (the 1st falling Tuesday to Friday), that week already belongs to the new month, so you plan the new month in the week it begins; months starting on a weekend keep the week with the month that owns most of it. The top stripe shows the active Week of the year (W21, W22, etc.). Pull priorities from the month; each one's "Pays into" can point straight at your monthly priorities now. Your deliverables start as soft suggestions seeded from your own priorities, and last week's closing thought is quoted above the first input.
• Day: three priorities for today, drawn from the week. Plus a 2-minute reflection at end of day.

Each cadence now splits its planning from its reviewing into separate tabs, so you never land on an empty review before there is a plan to review:

• Year: Annual goals, then Annual wrap-up.
• Quarter: Set the quarter, Monthly priorities, then Check-in.
• Month: Plan, then Check-in.
• Week: Plan, then Reflection.
• Today: Plan, then Reflection.

The review tab stays locked until you lock that period's plan. Lock the plan and the review opens.

The quarter, month, week and day screens carry a Goal Plan button next to the period switcher. It opens every annual goal in one view: the Summit Goal it belongs to, the goal with its Targets, every milestone including the ones still ahead, and what this quarter contributes. Tick a milestone or update a number right there; the change counts everywhere, exactly as on the Year screen. It opens in full view; the Compact switch at the top right shows one goal at a time with a tab per life area.

What a planning screen shows, and in what order

Every one of the five screens is built the same way, top to bottom, so once you have read one you can read them all:

1. Where you are. The panel title and the five cadence tabs. The title stays in the same place when you switch between day, week, month, quarter and year, so nothing jumps.
2. What you are doing here. A numbered headline with one line explaining the job of this screen.
3. Anything that needs your attention. An overdue milestone, or a notice that you marked this period as a break. This is the only slot that is allowed to look like an alert.
4. What this feeds. The level directly above, so you can see what today is in service of.
5. The small friendly lines. Your purpose quote and the daily value anchor.
6. The work. Your inputs.

What this feeds: the level above

Each screen shows the level directly above it, not the top of the cascade. Planning a week shows your monthly goals; planning a month shows your quarterly focus. If more than three items are relevant, the first three show and the rest sit behind a more toggle.

When the level above is empty, the screen says so in plain words ("No monthly goals set yet, so this week has nothing closer to connect to"), shows the nearest level that does have something as a stand-in, and offers a button that takes you to the missing level. That is a recommendation, never a gate: you can plan a week without a month.

Goals and checkpoints the app drafts for you

When a life area has a Summit Goal and that year has no annual goal yet, the app writes a first draft rather than handing you a blank page: one annual goal per area, worded from your Summit, plus a checkpoint at the end of each remaining quarter.

• Drafts look like drafts. Anything the app wrote shows in muted grey, and a note above the checkpoint list says how many are still drafts. The moment you type over a draft it becomes yours, the muting drops, and the note stops counting it.
• You may get fewer checkpoints than you expect, or none. A checkpoint is only added when at least two months of the year are still ahead. Starting in January gives you three, June gives you one, and September gives you none, because six weeks is not enough time to move an annual goal. Getting none is the rule working, not a failure: the Milestones tab says so and invites you to add your own.
• Nothing is placed at the end of December, because the Annual wrap-up already closes the year.
• You can switch the whole thing off. Settings → Cadence → Draft annual goals from my Summit Goals, or the same switch on the Summit Goals step's Where this leads tab. Off means every annual goal starts blank. Switching it off never deletes anything already drafted.

To edit what it drafted, open Execute → Year and use the annual goal card for that area: the sentence is on The goal tab in the Objective box, and the checkpoints are on the Milestones tab, where each row lets you change the date, the title and the target. Renaming a life area carries its goals, milestones and Summit Goal with it. The trash icon removes one and Add milestone adds your own.

The calendar strip, at whatever zoom you are on

The strip above the panel follows the screen you are on. Day, week and month show the next two weeks of days; a quarter shows its three months and a year shows its four quarters, each cell carrying what is planned, due and overdue. Click any cell to jump there. A small toggle switches a quarter or year back to the day axis if you want it.

How much sits above the work

Settings → Cadence → Header density. Compact states in one line what this level feeds and keeps the detail behind a toggle. Full shows it straight away. Left on Follow my mode it stays compact in the reduced view and switches to full once you unlock the whole system.

Putting a small message away

Your purpose quote, the daily value anchor and the weekly line from your Strengths Profile each carry a small cross on the right. Click it and that line is gone for good, not just for this session. Settings → Cadence → Hidden messages lists everything you have hidden and restores the lot with one button; the section does not appear at all while nothing is hidden.

Overdue milestones, the coming-up list and the break notice deliberately have no cross. Those are the state of your plan rather than messages, and a plan that can be told to stop mentioning a missed deadline is how deadlines get missed twice. If an overdue milestone is wrong, open it and change the date.

Coming-up items (overdue or due-soon) sit at the top of every cadence so you cannot lose them. Each row carries its own chip, Action needed, Due today or Coming up, and only a genuinely late row is tinted, so a calm week stops looking like an emergency. Every row has an Open milestone button that takes you straight to it from whichever tab you are on.

Planning rhythm (Settings › Cadence)

Four switches shape how much of the cascade you plan, all in one place since v82: Plan daily (turn it off if days feel too granular; the week becomes your finest level), Reflection on its own day, Show the calendar bar, and the annual-goal cap (3 across all areas by default; raise it only if you truly need to).

The Friction Map on a goal

The Friction Map tab is where you plan for what could go wrong. Name the obstacles that would realistically stop you, then sort each one twice: is it in your control or context you adapt to, and is it a one-off or something that keeps coming back? The app then routes you to the counter-move that fits: a classic if-then plan for the foreseeable ones ("If [obstacle], then I will [action]"), a change to your setup for the recurring ones, or a Plan B trigger for context you cannot change ("if X becomes true, this goal re-scopes to Y"). Your External factors notes from the Life Areas step appear next to the list to help you sort. You can back any if-then response with one of your own strengths, the same "Leaning on" line the Strengths Profile uses; the app suggests a pairing and you can change it. Your counter-moves come back in two places. The month check-in asks about the obstacles belonging to goals that moved that month: did it happen, and if it did, did your counter-move hold. Answers are kept, so an obstacle that never materialises stops being asked about every month and one tap retires it for good. The Insights coach also raises a named re-scope trigger when a goal has milestones off track.

Reviews all have one shape. Every review from day to year answers the same four questions in order: what happened, how it went, what you learned, what is next. Milestones appear once per review in the "Milestones that need you" block, which carries all the controls: status, number, date, and the on-track / at-risk / off-track call. The quarter check-in asks where each yearly goal stands; the annual wrap-up closes each goal against its Summit Goal.

Numbers work like this. Any counter accelerates when you hold its plus or minus button. A task can point at one of your numbers through the pays-into list and then ticking it counts toward that number, with the amount shown on the task before you ever tick. When a number reaches its target the milestone asks whether to mark it achieved (and asks again if it later drops below, instead of deciding). After a real achieve it offers a stretch target on top; the stretch is a bonus and is never graded.

4.8 Habits: the Habit Garden

One habit per page. Each habit has five parts:

1. Habit: what you will do. "Write 800 words on the active article."
2. Identity statement: I am someone who writes before the world distracts me. Name the person you become each time you do it.
3. Habit stack: after an existing routine you already do, I will do this habit. Stacks beat willpower.
4. Lazy day version: what counts if you only have 5 minutes. The habit only sticks if you finish something, so a small version you can always do keeps you going on tired days.
5. Reward: a small positive outcome you actually want.

Then tick each day on the grid. The habit layer runs on the Comeback rule: the skill is not never missing, it is never missing twice. Miss a day and you have a one-day comeback window. Drop to your lazy-day version and an amber tick holds the streak; a full day right after fires a comeback badge on your Wall of Wins. The grid color-codes all of this for you. (This builds on the older "never miss twice" idea, sometimes called the two-day rule.)

Start with 1 to 3 habits. Add more once the first ones are automatic.

Habits normally unlock after your first week plan. If you want habits without the planning, tap the locked Habits step and choose Start with habits instead: the Habit Garden opens right away, and the full cascade stays available for later.

4.9 Insights: live from your data

Insights pulls live numbers from your plan and turns them into a small dashboard. The charts are read-only; milestones can be graded right from their cards.

You see four tabs at the top:

• Overview: headlines and celebrations. "Habits are landing (97%)." "5 quarter milestones lined up, ready to start."
• Trends: charts and year-over-year. Habit consistency, goal completion, reflection cadence.
• Detail: cadence depth (how often you actually plan the week), per-habit history, milestone log.
• Reflections (new in v82): everything you have ever written into a reflection, browsable in one place. Your quarters, months, weeks and days form a tree, each level carrying the words you closed it with, plus its quiet numbers (tasks done, habit share, your star rating). Three cards on top give you a reason to visit: the line you wrote a year ago today, your highest-energy days and what they had in common, and how steady your daily reflections have been. A search box finds any sentence you ever wrote. Once you have answered the daily value anchor often enough, a one-line mirror shows how often your values really made it into your days.

The Calendar / Month Check-in / Quarter Check-in / Year Wrap-up chips at the top right export a printable summary you can read or share. The Quarterly check-in also links straight into Reflections ("Re-read this quarter"), so re-reading becomes part of the ritual.

4.10 Wins: the Wall of Wins

Every win you have earned, in one place. Closed milestones, completed quarters, habit streak records, badges, finished annual goals: they all become a card here.

The step is hidden from the stepper until you have earned your first achievement. It appears the first time you mark a milestone as done, wrap a quarter, or earn a habit badge. The earliest badge, First 3-day streak, lands the first time any habit's streak reaches 3 days; The comeback lands when you mark a habit done the day right after a lazy-day tick. Both are within reach in your first week.

You can filter by category (Milestones, Quarters, Years, Other) and export the whole thing to a printable poster. Open it when your confidence is low. Small wins are what the big ones are built from.

5. The cadence: 5 minutes a day, 10 minutes on Sunday

The point of the cascade is that you do not need to think hard most days. The thinking happens once a year (Vision + Summit Goals) and once a quarter (check-in + reset). The rest is execution.

Daily (5 minutes, end of day)

• Tick today's habits.
• Mark each priority as done, partial, or moved.
• Answer the one-tick value question (see the daily value anchor, just below).
• 2-minute reflection: what worked, what got in the way, plus an optional "one thing I learned today" line.

The daily value anchor

Your values shape your life areas, your vision and your Summit Goals, and after that they tend to disappear. The anchor is the one place your values appear in an ordinary day.

• In the morning, on the day screen. One line names one of your top five values and suggests a way to bring it into what you actually planned. It rotates, so it is a different value each day rather than always your number one, and the wording is drawn from twenty prompts so you do not stop reading it.
• In the evening, at the reflection. One tick: did you bring that value into the day. There is nothing to write. Leaving it blank is not a no. A day you never answered counts as unanswered, not as a failure.
• What it is for. After a few months the ticks show which of your values you are living and which ones you keep leaving out. A value you ranked highly and rarely tick usually points back at your Life Areas rather than at the value.
• The value is recorded with the day. Re-ranking your values later changes tomorrow's anchor, never yesterday's, so your history stays a record of what actually happened.
• Switching it off. Settings → Cadence → Daily value anchor. Off means no line on the day and no tick at the reflection. Anything already recorded is kept.

Weekly (10 minutes, Sunday)

• Read your Insights numbers (your habit consistency, your closing streak, your tasks-completed number).
• Pick next week's three priorities from the month.
• Skim Coming Up for anything overdue.

In the Full system, the weekly reflection also offers one optional line, One win this week: jot a single win in about two minutes and it lands as a card on your Wall of Wins. It is hidden in the Essentials lens; switch to the Full system to use it.

Monthly (20 minutes, last Sunday of the month)

• Per focus area, mark each monthly goal: Traffic Light status (Green, Amber, Red).
• Read your Month Check-in.
• Set next month's focus.

Quarterly (45 minutes, last weekend of the quarter)

• Per focus area, full Quarter Check-in.
• Adjust your annual goals if Q1 numbers say you were wrong.
• Re-read your active Vision.

Annually (90 minutes, between Christmas and New Year)

• Read your Year Wrap-up.
• Decide which Three Futures path is still active.
• Re-pick your 1 to 2 focus areas for next year.
• Write next year's Summit Goal (or restate it if it still holds).

The Year Wrap-up now closes the loop. It ends with a short fit-check: re-read your Top 5 values and your Summit Goals, follow the revisit links back to anything that no longer fits, and then a Start the next climb button takes you into next year.

When you open a new year that holds only untouched auto-drafts, a Carry the climb forward view opens first. For each priority area it shows your Summit Goal, last year's win in that area (or an honest note when there was not one), and one question: what will move you toward this summit this year?

You will probably miss a Sunday. That is fine. The same comeback principle applies to reflections: skip one, no harm; skip two in a row and the rhythm starts to slip. What matters is getting back to it on the next Sunday, not punishing yourself for missing one.

Taking a planned break

Holiday, exam season, a newborn: open the day, week, or month sheet and click Mark as a break. A break pauses prompts and stops that period from counting against your stats. Click the same button again to unmark it, in the place where you set it.

Catching up after missed weeks

Away for anything from a few days to a couple of months? A catch-up bar appears when you return: how long you were away, plus one action, logging a quick summary of where you left off. The catch-up is deliberately short: you are never asked to backfill weeks of missed reflections. Write one short summary, then plan forward from today.

Coming back after months away

Away 90 days or more? On your next visit a Welcome back screen offers a choice: revisit your Vision and Summit Goals first (a lot can change in that time), or skip straight ahead and plan today. Your plan stays exactly as you left it either way, and days you marked as a break do not count toward the 90.

6. Save, load, and Dropbox sync

The companion app saves your plan to this browser automatically as you type. The save status sits in a small floating pill at the bottom right of the screen:

The pill reads "All changes saved on this device": your plan is on your device and nowhere else. Click the pill to open What gets saved?, a plain list of what is stored (your name and settings, values and purpose, life areas, vision and goals, milestones, habits, and your day, week, month, and quarter entries), where it lives, and a "Last saved" line, plus a button to download a .save backup file. When you download a backup, the confirmation shows on the pill itself instead of a popup.

Manual save and load

• Save (Ctrl+S or Cmd+S): downloads a .save file. Keep it somewhere safe (Dropbox, iCloud, USB, email-to-self).
• Load (Ctrl+O or Cmd+O): opens a confirm dialog before replacing your current plan. Read the preview carefully; loading is destructive.

Two reasons to save manually:

1. Before switching browsers or devices.
2. Before any big change (loading demo data, resetting all data, browser update).

Dropbox sync (optional)

Open Settings (More menu → Settings) and open the Sync tab:

Click Connect Dropbox. A standard Dropbox OAuth window asks you to grant the app permission to its own private folder. Note: Dropbox sync works when the app runs from goalsandprogress.com; on any other origin (a local copy, for example) the Dropbox consent screen will refuse the connection. Once connected:

• Sync writes to Apps/Life Goals Program/ on your Dropbox.
• Every save also pushes to that folder.
• Load any time from any device you have signed into the same Dropbox.
• Disconnect any time. Your local plan stays.

If you do not use Dropbox, just save the .save file manually before you switch devices. Both work.

Print to PDF

Every major screen has a Print / Save PDF button (top right of the step). It does not screenshot the page: it builds a clean paper layout from your data. Daily, weekly, month, quarter, and year plans come out as checklist-style sheets; the Habit Garden prints a year grid, one page per habit; the Wall of Wins prints as a keepsake; the Values step prints a frameable card with your top 5 and purpose statement. Each page carries a small Goals & Progress watermark. Use your browser's "Save as PDF" option in the print dialog to keep a file instead of paper.

To export several parts of your plan in one file, open More menu → Download plan as PDF. Pick the sections you want (values card, year, quarter, month, week, and day plans, the Habit Garden, the Wall of Wins) and a date range (current period; this week, month, quarter, or year; or a custom range). You see a size estimate before you export, then save through the same browser print dialog: pick "Save as PDF" as the destination.

7. Demo mode

Demo mode loads a sample plan with several years of values, goals, milestones, and habit history so you can see what a populated app feels like. Useful for:

• Exploring features before you have your own data.
• Showing a friend or coworker what the app does.
• Trying out the Insights dashboard with realistic numbers.

Open it from More menu → Load demo data…. The demo loads Maya Chen, the persona used as the running example throughout this guide:

Maya is screenshot-ready: 30 days of daily reflections, 3 habits with multi-month grids, monthly retros that light up the Wall of Wins, a current quarter mid-flight, and a previous year already wrapped. Other personas mentioned in the guide (David and Catherine) are illustrative scenarios only: they help you imagine your own plan, but they are not loadable in the demo.

Read the rest of the dialog before clicking Load demo:

• Your real plan stays safe. Demo mode disables Save, so nothing you do in the demo overwrites the plan stored in this browser.
• A "Back to my data" link appears in the demo banner at the top so you can return any time.
• If you have unsaved work, click Save first to download a .save backup before loading the demo.

8. Themes: 33 palettes, light or dark

Open Settings (More menu → Settings). Under Appearance → Color scheme you have 33 palettes:

Abalone Night, Alpine Express, Apricot Meridian, Atlas Dusk, Brushed Steel, Captain's Mirage, Carroburg Twilight, Classic Glass, Crimson Ledger, Electric Orchid, Enchanted Plum, English Daydream, Forge Smoke, Highland Mist, Iris Twilight, Library Velvet, Marsh Heron, Nebula Twist, Neon Meadow, Orbital Persia, Orchard Vespers, Peafowl Parade, Polar Honey, Reef Diving, Riverside Persimmon, Saffron Palms, Sakura Twilight, Souk Night, Stardust Atoll, Sunkissed Saltflats, Vespers Tide, Wharfside Embers, Whiskey Harbor.

Each palette comes with three accent colors. The right-hand preview tile shows what the palette looks like applied. Click any palette to apply it instantly.

Below the palette list, Dark mode flips the surface from light to dark for whichever palette is selected. Use the system-preferences route (set your OS to Dark) if you want it to follow your laptop.

The Classic Glass palette is the default and is the safest pick for daily use. The bolder palettes (Carroburg Twilight, Neon Meadow, Souk Night) are great for short sessions and presentation but can fatigue the eyes if you work in the app for hours.

9. Keyboard shortcuts

The Jump palette is the fastest way to move around the app:

Press Ctrl+K anywhere, then type a few letters of a step name (val, pur, hab, win) and hit Enter. You can also use it to jump to a specific field inside a step.

A small floating chip in the corner reminds you about Ctrl/Cmd+K until you dismiss it. Turn it off in Settings → Appearance → Show Ctrl/Cmd+K hint.

10. Troubleshooting

"I lost my data"

If your plan vanished from the app:

1. Check if you have a .save file in Downloads. If yes, Load it.
2. Check Dropbox if you connected sync. The latest .save will be in Apps/Life Goals Program/ on your Dropbox.
3. Check the same browser on the same device. Plan data is stored in localStorage, scoped to one browser profile. Chrome and Safari each have their own copy.
4. If you cleared browser data or used an incognito window, the plan is gone. There is no server-side backup.

To protect against this, save a .save file every few weeks, or connect Dropbox sync.

"The theme looks broken"

1. Open Settings → Color scheme.
2. Pick Classic Glass.
3. If that fixes it, the previous palette had a contrast issue with your OS dark-mode setting. Try the same palette in the opposite mode (light vs dark).
4. If Classic Glass still looks wrong, hard-refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R / Cmd+Shift+R) to bypass the browser cache.

"Dropbox sync stopped working"

1. Open Settings → Sync.
2. Click Disconnect Dropbox, then Connect Dropbox again. This refreshes the OAuth token.
3. If Dropbox shows a permission prompt, accept it. The app needs access to its own scoped folder only.
4. If the connect button does nothing, check that pop-ups are not blocked for 127.0.0.1:8773 (local) or goalsandprogress.com/lifegoalsapp/ (production).

"Storage is full"

The companion app stores about 100 KB to 2 MB depending on how much history you have. Browsers cap localStorage at 5 to 10 MB per origin. If you see a "Browser storage is full" banner:

1. Press Ctrl+S to download a .save backup right now.
2. Open Settings → Danger zone → I understand these actions are permanent.
3. You can selectively clear old reflections, old habit history, or run a full reset (only after you have the .save file).

"I want to start over"

1. Press Ctrl+S to back up your current plan.
2. Settings → Danger zone → I understand these actions are permanent.
3. Click Reset all data.
4. The app reloads as if you had just unlocked it for the first time.

"Something else is broken"

Open the in-app Feedback button (top right, next to More) or email support@goalsandprogress.com. Include:

• What you were doing when it broke.
• What you expected.
• What actually happened.
• Browser + version (Chrome 138, Safari 18, etc.).
• A screenshot if you can.

I read all feedback personally during the beta.

11. The deal: give feedback, get the final version free

The beta runs from 21 May 2026 to 31 August 2026. Here is the trade:

• You use the app, in full, no feature limits.
• You send meaningful feedback at least once during the beta. "It crashed when I clicked X" counts. "The Vision step felt confusing because Y" counts even more. A two-line "I love it, here is one thing that bugs me" counts.
• In exchange, you get the v1.0 launch version free, with a one-click import from your beta data.

That is it. No coupon codes, no special links. If your email is on my beta list and you send at least one piece of feedback before 31 August, you get the launch version free.

Send feedback through:

• The in-app Feedback button (top right, opens a quick form via Senja).
• Email to support@goalsandprogress.com.

Both go to the same place. Both are read by me, not a bot or a contractor. Thank you for being here. The app is good already; with your input it will be excellent.