The promise: if I do my small list today, I am provably moving toward my year goal. Here is the full setup, once, so the shape is clear. It takes about three minutes.
"I want to read 5 books this year."
1. The year goal. In Life, add a goal to your Growth area:
- Read 5 books in 2026 — kind Goal, tracker Counter, target 5, unit "books", planning horizon This year.
2. The current book. Add a thing inside it:
- Finish "Linchpin" — kind Book, tracker chapter 0 / 20, horizon This month.
3. This week's slice. You want 7 chapters this week. Open the book, break off a piece for today:
- "Read chapter 1" — moves the meter by 1.
That's the whole setup. No week-goal object is even required — the book's meter is the week's scoreboard. (If you like an explicit weekly target, nest a counter "7 chapters this week", horizon This week, inside the book. The horizon stepper knows a week inside a month stays inside that month.)
Tomorrow morning, Plan shows Read chapter 1 with a "+1 chapters" tag. You read, you check it:
- the task completes,
- Linchpin becomes chapter 1/20 — visible in Life, in the month list, everywhere,
- Read 5 books in 2026 nudges forward, because progress flows upward through the nesting.
Each day, break off the next chapter — or set a repeat on the book ("weekdays") so a reading row appears by itself and you log chapters as you go.
When the meter hits 20/20 the book completes itself. Bump the year counter: 1 of 5 books. Add the next book inside the year goal and the ladder keeps going.
Not everything deserves this. "Give clothes for washing" is a task on today, full stop. The ladder is for the three or four ambitions where you genuinely want the answer to "is today connected to anything?" to be yes — and visible.