How is a daily intention different from a to-do list?

A to-do list tracks everything you need to do. A daily intention captures the most important directional commitment for the day. The intention governs how you sequence and prioritize the to-do list.

Can I set multiple intentions per day in today?

today has one daily outcome field, which serves as the primary daily intention. Supporting intentions can be captured as commitments or as block labels in your time plan.

What's the best time to set a daily intention?

First thing in the morning, before checking email or messages. Setting the intention before exposure to reactive demands keeps it genuinely self-directed rather than reactively determined.

Should intentions be ambitious or realistic?

Realistically ambitious. An intention you always meet is a to-do item. An intention you never meet is a wish. The sweet spot is challenging enough to require deliberate focus, achievable enough that normal execution produces it.

Set your daily intention before the day sets it for you

today helps you set a daily outcome and intentions before the day's reactive demands take over. Anchor your day with purpose, not just a schedule.

The difference between intentions and tasks

A task is finite and specific: write the proposal, send the report, schedule the interview. An intention is directional and qualitative: make the most important creative work my first block, approach meetings as a listener not a presenter, finish the day with energy left. Intentions don't appear in task managers because they're not actionable in the traditional GTD sense — you can't check them off a list. But they shape how you execute tasks in ways that pure task management can't. today's daily outcome is a compressed intention: one statement that answers 'what is today for?' before the day begins.

Morning intention-setting as a cognitive anchor

Cognitive anchoring refers to the outsized influence of early information on subsequent decisions. Setting an intention at the start of the day anchors subsequent choices — which meeting to prioritize, which request to defer, which task to start when the block opens. Without an anchor, decisions default to recency (the last thing someone mentioned) or urgency (whatever's loudest in the inbox). With an intention clearly set, the question is always 'does this align with my outcome today?' That question filters a surprising percentage of reactive requests before they consume your time.

Intention-setting within a busy schedule

Daily intentions are most valuable precisely when the day is most scheduled. If your calendar shows wall-to-wall meetings, setting an intention for the one 45-minute gap you have ensures that gap isn't wasted. The intention becomes: 'in the 2–2:45pm window, I will finish the analysis section of the deck.' Without that intention, the gap might disappear into email or the preparatory anxiety of the next meeting. today makes this easy: you see the gap in your timeline, create a block for it, set your session intention, and the 45 minutes has a job before the day begins.

Reviewing your intentions in the evening reflection

The daily reflection in today naturally surfaces whether your intentions were met. If you set an outcome in the morning and review it at night, you can answer honestly: did the day go as intended? If yes, what enabled it? If no, what intervened? Over time, this morning-intention/evening-review cycle becomes a personal research project into your own best conditions for good work. The findings are always more specific and actionable than generic productivity advice because they're drawn from your actual schedule, your actual energy patterns, and your actual work type.

Frequently asked questions