Daily Intentions
Daily Intentions give you a structured space to commit to what matters before the day's noise begins. Unlike a bottomless to-do list, intentions are deliberate, dimension-tagged, and reviewed, so they actually shape your day.
Why three
Xenith encourages a small number of intentions each day by design. Research on decision fatigue and implementation intentions is consistent: a few specific commitments beat a long wish list. Three things you will genuinely do is a plan. Twelve things you might do is just anxiety in list form.
Setting your intentions
- Open Intentions from the sidebar (/app/intentions).
- Optionally log a quick morning mood. It takes two seconds and anchors your planning to how you actually feel today.
- Write each intention as a specific, completable action, not a vague goal.
- Less good: "Work on the project."
- Better: "Draft the project proposal intro."
- Tag each intention to a Life Dimension so patterns surface over time: which areas you consistently prioritize, and which you keep deferring.
Repeating intentions
For commitments that recur on a schedule (a weekly gym session, a monthly budget review), add a Repeat rule from the intentions add form instead of retyping the same intention every day:
- Weekly, on whichever specific days you choose.
- Monthly, every N months.
- An optional start and end date, for a recurrence that shouldn't run forever.
Xenith expands the rule into individual, completable intentions on the days they're due, so each occurrence still gets its own dimension tag and its own completed/partial/deferred review. Repeating doesn't mean unreviewed.
Still open
An intention you did not finish does not disappear. Open intentions from the last 14 days (up to 5) appear in Still open on your dashboard and at the top of Intentions, labeled with the day they were for. For each one you can:
- Keep for today: move it to today.
- Done: mark it complete.
- Let it go: archive it. An undo appears right after, and nothing is ever archived for you.
Email reminders
When you add an intention for today or a later day, you can choose Email me around an hour (6:00 AM to 9:00 PM). Reminders are off unless you pick an hour. At that hour, in your time zone, Xenith sends one email listing what is still open that day. Emails go out from an hourly run, so expect it within about the hour you chose. Repeating intentions do not have reminders. Turn reminders off any time with the unsubscribe link in the email or in Notifications.
The hour picker appears as soon as you open the add form, and also in onboarding, where it is optional and never pre-selected.
Mark done from the email. Each intention in a reminder email has a Mark done link. It opens a page with one button, and nothing changes until you press it, so a mail app that previews links can't complete anything for you. The link works for 72 hours, only ever marks that one intention done, and pressing it again does nothing. It can't be used for anything else.
On your calendar. If you picked a reminder hour, the intention shows up in your calendar link as a timed block at that hour instead of an all-day item.
Reviewing at day's end
Come back in the evening and mark each intention as completed, partial, or deferred. This closes the feedback loop most tools skip. The goal isn't a perfect score. It's calibration. If three is consistently too many, do two well.
No streaks here either
Xenith tracks your completion trend over time, never a streak. A steady 60–80% completion rate on meaningful intentions is healthier than a 100% rate on trivial ones.
How it differs from a to-do list
| To-do list | Xenith Intentions |
|---|---|
| Infinite and context-free | Dated and limited |
| No emotional context | Mood-anchored |
| Uncategorized | Tagged to a life dimension |
| Rarely reviewed | Reviewed each evening |
See the patterns
Your intentions feed the Insights dashboard: completion rate over time, your most-tagged dimensions, and how your morning mood relates to how much you get done.
Next steps
- Turn an intention into deep work with Focus.
- Build supporting habits with Routines.
- Close the day with Reflection.