Get to know Complice
Intentions
If you're not intentional about how you spend your days, it's hard to get anywhere except by accident.
The Intentions Format lets you quickly enter your intentions for the day, indicating which goal each task goes towards by starting that line with the number of the goal.
For miscellaneous tasks, you use some other symbol, conventionally an ampersand (&) or a tilde (~) but you can be creative and use symbols like $ or ♫ or ♥ if those seem more appropriate.
You can also indicate that a task goes towards multiple goals by separating their numbers by commas, e.g. 1,2) hike with Kate might go toward both a fitness and a relationships goal.
Outcomes
One of the core parts of the Complice workflow is completing your outcomes at the end of the day (or the next morning, for some people). Where your intentions capture what you intend to do each day, your outcomes are a chance to reflect on what you ultimately accomplished, and how that looks in relation to your overall goal.
This is the accountability aspect of Complice. It's soft accountability: there's no punishment if you don't Complice your intentions. Instead, it's being accountable for looking at that list of intentions you set sometime in the last 24h, and reckoning with the items on the list. Not just letting them slip by.
For some goals, you may have numerical metrics for assessing whether or not a given day was enough. For others, it might be totally by feel: am I satisfied with how today went?
If you're not sure, consider: if the next hundred days go like this one, am I on track towards my goal? You may find you want to distinguish, too, between days that you intended to do a lot towards a given goal versus days that were focused on some other area of your life.
Hotkeys for outcomes editor
Press enter while in the "say more..." box, and it automatically jumps you down to the next goal's buttons. From there, it's an easy shift-tab to get to the plus button, or just press the += key on the keyboard, to create a new item.
But also, when you have the buttons selected, you can deploy the letter keys to answer the "Is this enough?" question:
- y (or e) for "enough"
- n for "not enough"
- d for "day off"
When you select one of these buttons (by any means, including space or the mouse) it automatically focuses the "say more..." field. This means that you can rapidly progress through the form by hitting y, enter, n, enter, y, enter... etc.
Daily Habits
Have tasks you want to do every day? Or maybe just habits you want to track, like "get up before noon" or "drink at least 20 cups of water?" You can add these to your list of Daily Defaults by pressing the blue above the intentions box.
In order to not swamp you with these items, they don't automatically get added to your list every day. Instead, during the intentions-setting phase, you get to push a button ( ) to add them, and then you can edit them if certain ones don't make sense that day.
Tips
You can put an extra ( before the number, which is an informal way to make the daily intentions look less punchy and more remindery. It doesn’t get parsed as anything special at the moment, though it might!
Some users also like using ~ for miscellaneous in dailies, instead of &. It’s smaller and seems more like a structure than a specific thing I have to do. See the examples below.
Include something about getting up on time. If you set your intentions the night before, add something like (~) get up without snoozing my alarm. Or, preventatively, (~) turn off my computer at 11pm.
Want to practice a new style of working? Add something like (~) use pomodoros or (~) no email before noon.
Like the (, nothing special happens with these values, but again, maybe it will soon! (Like they could be graphed or sent to Beeminder or something)
NotDone Propagator
Most todo lists very quickly become stale, ie full of old tasks:
- tasks you've done but forgotten to check off
- tasks that are no longer important
- tasks that would be worth doing but at this point they've been on the list so long that you don't even want to look at them
Complice avoids this by having you make a fresh list each day. If you don't do something, it doesn't just stick around forever. It goes on the list of "things I was intending to do yesterday but didn't". Which is fine! You don't need to do everything every day.
To make it a bit easier to recover tasks that are truly important though, Complice now has a feature that shows you not-done tasks from the last 3 days and lets you grab them for today's intentions. This makes the recovery of said tasks be a conscious act, rather than an unconscious default state. You have to consciously think, "no, this is really important."
(Protip: Complice inserts extra )s on intentions that have been left undone in the past, to make them visually distinct. These don't have any specific function yet though.)
It's easy to remove tasks, and if you don't do something multiple days in a row, you get a message like this:
Pomodoro Timer
Here's how it works: pick a task to work on.
Work for 25 minutes
If anything tries to interrupt you, don't let it. Write it down if it's a thing you need to do later. If you let something distract you, you have to reset the timer. Focused work is important.
Then...
Take a break for 5 minutes
Actually take a break! Even if you're right in the middle of something! Being in the middle means it's exciting to come back, unlike if you break when you're stuck, and then it's tough to come back.
When the break timer ends, start another 25 minute work timer. Repeat. Every 4 or so, maybe, take a 20 minute break.
Features:
- continuous & one-off mode
- custom work & break lengths (easy to change)
- custom long-break frequency & length
- optional ticking sound while the clock is running
- multiple ending sounds
- desktop notifications
- assign completed pomodoros to tasks
- share your clock with friends so they know when to message you (or can work together)
“This is the only thing I have found so far that keeps me even moderately productive in very unstructured work situations.”
This isn't just a built-in timer though. It connects very closely with your list of intentions for the day. Once you've completed a pomodoro, a little tomato will appear next to the timer: . Drag it onto on of your intentions to say "I did a pomodoro of work towards this" (or use the triple dot menu (⋮) on mobile)
Coworking Rooms
Features:
- Share what you're working on & see what others are up to
- Synchronized pomodoro clock: take breaks at the same time
- Chat, for during the breaks (group chat + direct messaging)
- Video, for presence (optional, & without audio, to reduce distraction)
- Open to anyone, including non-Complice users
- Create your own private room for your friends or your team
“Joining this room is probably the literal best thing that happened to me this decade. Thank you to the people who made this place exist.”
(tip: if you have limited bandwidth, add #videoDisabled to the end of the url before loading the page and it'll turn off the video module entirely)
Beeminder Integration
Beeminder is for quantifiable, graphable, usually long-term goals. It focuses on ongoing metrics like time spent working, pages read, words written, or tasks completed. (It's also good for fitness goals like steps, calories, weight, hours of sleep, etc.)
What really makes Beeminder unique though, is adding an explicit commitment device to your Quantified Self data. You literally enter a credit card and agree to get charged money if you don't keep all your datapoints on a Yellow Brick Road to your goal. It's not for everyone but it's life-changing for some, and integrates beautifully with Complice.
Complice things to beemind
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Using Complice daily
Beemind using Complice at all: Complice works best if you check into it daily, so you can beemind this. This is the epitome of “hard accountability for soft accountability”.
- Intentions & outcomes If you're checking in each day but you're still consistently forgetting to do something towards one of your goals, this lets you set a rate of progress for that goal, eg "1 completed outcome per day".
-
Pomodoros (total & per-goal)
Complice has a built-in pomodoro timer, with the ability to assign completed pomodoros to individual tasks. You can then pipe these through to Beeminder to graph them and to make sure that you’re doing enough.
- Starred tasks (total & per-goal) Want to have One Must-Do Task Each Day? You can track that in Complice+Beeminder. Star the task, and when you complete it, Beeminder will get a datapoint.
- # Special numbers & more Want to track the number of pushups you do? The number of minutes you spend reading? Or the sum of a bunch of numbers? The Arbeetrary Tasks integration has got you covered!
- Weekly & monthly reviews Let’s face it, almost nobody does their weekly reviews. Unlike GTD, Complice doesn't completely fall apart if you miss these, but they're still really valuable, so make it happen!
Plus, you can get a fancy widget on your Complice today page that allows you to quickly see the status of your beeminder goals and enter new datapoints.
Accountability Partners
- What? Link your account with someone else's to gain accountability towards your goals.
- How?
- Get emails with your partner's activities
- See what your partner is working on while on your own today page
- When?
- Continuously via the partner tab on your today page
- Daily email updates
- Periodically help your partner stay accountable towards their top priorities
- Who?
- Use it to stay in touch with a friend
- or find a stranger who won't let you slack off
Research suggests that simply telling other people about your goals can make you less likely to work hard at them, perhaps because the mere act of telling them feels like progress. The Complice Accountability Partner system is different though, because you're not just telling them—you're making a specific plan, and they're overhearing. Also because your partner will see within a day if you're not doing what you intended, so you can't exactly rest on your laurels.
“My boyfriend introduced it to me and suggested that we use it to stay updated on each others' lives while we're doing the long distance thing.”
Dark Theme
Complice is made to be used throughout your day. But if it's late at night, you might not want to be staring at a bright white screen. Toggle darktheme (or have it automatically enable in the evening) to relax your eyes.
Enable this by clicking the gear on the today page, then the View tab.
Hotkeys
Basic today page hotkeys
| ? | Show / hide this help menu |
| ` | Open settings dialog (above tab key on most keyboards) |
| n/m | Switch to NextAction/Organize tab |
| i/o | Toggle intentions/outcomes setting mode |
| 0-9 | Enter a new intention for the goal with that number |
| alt + 0-9 | Filter list by the goal with that number |
| space | Toggle done-ness of selected action (or next action) |
| c | Select next action (top not-done action) |
| ↑/↓ k/j | Select higher/lower |
| ⇧+↑/↓ K/J | Move selected item up/down |
| t | Timer: start/pause timer (note: pomos are indivisible, so you can't pause one halfway through) (also this hotkey will add a minute to the timer during breaks) |
| r | Timer: cancel |
| y | Timer: apply detected time |
| ctrl+alt+shift+h | Timer: generate extra sandpile |
| ctrl+alt+shift+p | Timer: generate extra tomato |
Advanced today page hotkeys
| shift+c | Move selected item so it's the current action |
| l | (lowercase L) Select the last not-done action |
| L | Move selected item so it's the last action |
| * | Toggle star on an action |
| % | Toggle nevermind on an action |
| a | Append text to an action |
| ctrl+shift+a | Show/hide completed actions |
| # | Seed the intentions input with a #) for each goal |
| shift+t | Timer: start pomo clock with a break |
| p | Assign a completed work block (eg tomato) to selected item |
| shift+p | Unassign a work block (eg tomato) from an action |
| alt+p | Destroy an unassigned work block (eg tomato) |
| alt+shift+p | Undestroy an unassigned work block (eg tomato) |
| ctrl+shift+a | Hide/show completed tasks |
| f | Toggle distraction free mode |
| shift + f | Toggle dark theme |
| g e | Go to timeline page |
| g g | Go to goals page |
| g r | Go to reviews page |
| g s | Go to settings page |
To submit intentions quickly, press ↹ tab (to shift focus to the submit button) then press ↩ enter (to submit it). You can combine this with the following options (which also work while clicking the button).
In addition, if you hold ⇧ shift when submitting intentions, they'll be put as the next task(s), rather than at the bottom.
And if you hold ctrl+ ⇧ shift when submitting intentions, they'll be put second from the top, underneath the current next task.