#complice-philosophy

[complicegoals]

Complice NOW with even less staleness

The Complice app is famously designed to avoid one of the major problems that plagues productivity systems: staleness. Staleness is when a list gets full of items that are no longer priorities or perhaps no longer useful at all, and it's a common reason people give up on a system (implicitly or explicitly).

The main way Complice has avoided staleness so far is by keeping your list focused just on today. You can't put in a bunch of stuff days or weeks in advance, and if you didn't do something yesterday, Complice doesn't assume that it should hang over you today.

...but what if today's list goes stale midday through the day? Sometimes I set a bunch of intentions last night and when I look at them today I'm just like "ugh I don't want to do any of that."

Introducing: the Now Page. It's the Today Page of the Today Page. It always starts blank, even if you've already set intentions for the day, and just asks "What now?" You choose something to work on, by typing in an intention or picking one from various lists, and then it shows you that.

At first glance, this may strike you as essentially equivalent to the Next Action view or the New Tab Page extension. There's one key difference from those though: when you mark your Now intention complete (or "not now/today") it doesn't automatically show you the next item on the list. It goes back to the expansive, open-ended "What now?"

If you just want to grab the next item from your list though, that's easy to do, just ctrl+click on the list icon and you'll automatically get the next item from the list. If you ctrl+shift+click, you'll get a random item from the list! You can do this with the existing intentions list, or the notdones list, and potentially other future lists.

The fact that it integrates with the existing intentions list means you can use the Now Page in parallel to the Today Page. You might set a list of intentions on the Today Page in the evening, then open the Now Page the next morning to decide what to do freshly. However, you can also use the Now Page exclusively, bypassing the Today Page altogether. This is a first for Complice—having a totally different primary workflow, that still integrates with outcomes, reviews, etc. I have the sense that more workflows are on the way.

So, if you're ready, click here to check it out: Now Page

[complicegoals]

Benefits to Complice over Evernote etc

A new user writes:

I use evernote for lists, and for planning my week. What do you think the additional benefit would be to adding goal-based tasks with complice? What are the must-dos for complice to get the most out of it? Thanks!

There are a few potential benefits, one of them being that Complice's daily outcomes review may more clearly help you make sure that you're actually working towards all of your long-term goals, and not just 1 or 2 of them.

Another is that many people find that GTD systems that involve collecting lots of items on lists often end up with a bunch of random things on the lists that aren't that important, but require a lot of managing, and mostly don't happen anyway. If you're not having this issue, congrats!

A third could be things like the integration with accountability partners, coworking rooms, etc.

As for must-dos, the most important thing I would say *is* that outcomes submission process. When Complice started, there was no site, just 2 emails a day asking for intentions & outcomes, and ultimately it's the outcomes that are the keystone of it all, because they allow you to see clearly which goals you're moving towards and which need more attention. And then some days it may also make sense to set intentions, or to use the pomodoro timer, and then maybe it also makes sense to do the weekly/monthly reviews, where again for each goal you look at what you did that week/month and consider if you're on track and what else you need to focus on.

A weekly review oriented to "how did I work this week and what's most important towards this goal?" is very different from a weekly review that's trying to organize a huge pile of tasks and prioritize between them, without deep consideration for "what am I actually trying to accomplish with all of this energy?" If what matters most to you is staying on top of lists and not missing deadlines, then such an approach may suit your lifestyle better than Complice! If what matters most to you is that a year from now you've made concrete progress on a few things (even if that means a couple of deadlines or tasks slipped) then Complice is probably a better fit.

​I do also think it's worth giving Complice a serious try for a few weeks; even if you don't stick with it, many people find that the experience helps them redesign their personal system.