A lightweight system that uncovers your goals, learns how you operate, minimizes logging, and doesn't breathe down your neck.
Most trackers fail for the same reason: you do all the cognitive work. You log, you interpret, you decide what it means, you figure out what to do next. After a few weeks, the friction wins. You stop.
The rest fail for the opposite reason: they're too heavy. The habit apps that turn your life into a game. The journaling systems that require a daily practice. They're all asking you to maintain a second job — managing the system itself.
- Doesn't lose sight of the big picture: Once a week, you answer 7 rapid-fire questions. Combining this week's vibe with your larger goals, the system proposes, and you approve.
- Adapts to your energy level: When you report a high-energy week, the AI proposes bolder goals. When you report medium or low energy, it scales back without you having to say "go easy on me." If you activate crash mode (one word), all growth expectations pause for the week and the floor drops to the minimum. No guilt. No catch-up.
- Private to you: Your goals and progress live in markdown files on your personal system. Nobody can access your goals.
- Combats your failure modes proactively: During setup, you identify your top 3 barriers to actually sticking with a system like this. The built-in cursor rule is engaged when you describe resistance.
- "Not now, but not never": It actually circles back on your goals and reservations later - allowing flexibility while keeping you accountable.
- Setup: Uncover your goals for the next few years, working with your current level of clarity. Short and long versions available.
- Check-in, reset, plan: Weekly check-ins are AI-led, and monthly resets are collaborative. But long-term visions are made by you.
- Track your progress: See how you've been doing using built-in visualizations.
Every week, you type weekly check-in. The AI:
- Loads your 1-year goals, last month's plan, and last 2 weeks of history — before you say a word
- Asks 7 rapid-fire questions (numbers and Y/N — no journaling required)
- Proposes 5 specific goals for the week based on your pace and what you've been avoiding
- Sets your 3 weekly reminders so you don't have to think about it during the week
- Flags if you're drifting off pace for the month — automatically
Once a month, type monthly reset. The AI reads your full month of weekly data, runs 3 career clarity questions (your "Role Compass" — which builds signal over time on what kind of work actually fits you), and proposes next month's targets calibrated to your actual capacity, not an idealized version of yourself.
You confirm or adjust. One session. Everything is written.
Quarterly reviews and a year-end synthesis reveal patterns you can't see week-to-week: how your energy correlates to your output, which pillars you systematically deprioritize, whether your stated career direction has been consistent or quietly shifting. The AI has kept every entry — nothing gets lost.
Your life has pillars: Career, Fitness, Social, Intellectual, Lifestyle. Each month, every pillar runs on one of four levels:
| Level | Effort | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Survive | 3/10 — floor only | 3 fixed weekly habits; non-negotiable but minimal |
| Sustain | ~5/10 — acceptable | Last month's hardest thing, now being locked in |
| Grow (primary) | ~7/10 — uncomfortable | 1 main push this month |
| Grow (secondary) | ~5/10 | 1 push in a different pillar |
This means you are never being asked to grow in everything at once. The system respects that capacity is finite and that trying to improve everywhere simultaneously is how systems collapse.
Rollover logic: If you don't hit a grow target, it becomes next month's Sustain. Nothing is abandoned. Nothing is lost. The system accounts for real life.
Crash mode: Built-in. One word activates it. Expectations drop to any 2 of 3 survive goals for the week. No guilt architecture. No catch-up required.
| Tool | What it does well | What it misses |
|---|---|---|
| Notion / Obsidian | Flexible, pretty | You do all the thinking; no memory; no adaptation |
| Habit trackers (Streaks, Habitica) | Good for streaks | No narrative arc; doesn't know who you are; gamification ≠ strategy |
| Journaling apps | Reflection space | No structure; no output; nothing proposed; no memory across entries |
| ChatGPT | Smart, fast | No persistent model that reliably circles backs on your goals |
| Therapist / life coach | Deep insight | Expensive; not available at 11pm; doesn't track your weekly data |
| Goal-setting frameworks (OKRs, SMART) | Structured planning | Static; no one checks in weekly; doesn't adapt to your energy or capacity |
This system is the only one that combines persistent memory + adaptive planning calibrated to your energy + personalized concern handling based on your failure modes + multi-year arc tracking — in something that takes 15 minutes a week and lives in your editor.
- Weekly: gym sessions, diet days, social exposures, conversations initiated, grow target progress, energy level, fun activity
- Monthly: Survive/Sustain/Grow targets, Role Compass (career clarity), project status, milestone progress
- Annually: Strength baselines, pillar trends, habit stack history, project completions
- Always: Your vision, your 1-year goals, your "anchor + constellation" life structure
No daily logging required. The system infers what it can from weekly inputs and asks only for what it can't compute.
- Cursor (the AI code editor — free tier works)
- 30 minutes for quick setup, or ~2 hours for deep setup (the
startcommand supports both)
- Clone or fork this repository
- Open the folder in Cursor
- Type
startin a new chat
The start command will now do two things in sequence:
- Technical setup: confirms your rules/files are in place, verifies personal-data protections in
.gitignore, and helps with optional Notion MCP setup - Life Arc setup: builds your personal vision, pillars, baselines, and 1-year goals via guided questions
At the end, it generates your Life-Arc-Overview.md, which becomes the AI's permanent reference for every future session.
You can choose:
- Quick setup (~30 min): enough to start weekly check-ins immediately
- Deep setup (~2 hours): stronger baseline detail and clearer milestones
After setup, your weekly workflow is:
- Every week:
weekly check-in(15 min) - End of each month:
monthly reset(60 min) - Every quarter: self-led review using your logs
This project is designed to be shared without exposing your personal goals or progress.
Before your first push, run:
git init
git add .
git statusReview git status and confirm personal files are not staged:
Life-Arc-Overview.mdSystem/Progress-Log.mdSystem/Progress-Visualizations.mdSystem/Role-Compass-Log.mdSystem/Reflections-Log.mdSystem/Monthly-Plans/YYYY-*.mdSystem/Data/monthly-history/**.docx
Then commit and push to your new GitHub repo:
git commit -m "Initial public template"
git branch -M main
git remote add origin <your-repo-url>
git push -u origin mainLife Building/
├── README.md ← you are here
├── Life-Arc-Overview.md ← your north star (generated by `start`)
├── System/
│ ├── Progress-Log.md ← weekly scoreboard + monthly summaries
│ ├── Progress-Visualizations.md ← bar charts, habit stack, milestone Gantt
│ ├── Project-Tracker-TEMPLATE.md ← copy to Project-Tracker.md locally (personal; gitignored)
│ ├── Role-Compass-Log.md ← monthly career clarity answers
│ ├── Reflections-Log.md ← deep-dive summaries from Part 5 check-ins
│ ├── Monthly-Plans/
│ │ ├── TEMPLATE-Plan.md ← blank monthly plan template
│ │ └── YYYY-MM-Plan.md ← one file per month (auto-created)
│ └── Data/
│ └── monthly-history/ ← structured monthly records (JSON + NDJSON)
└── .cursor/
└── rules/
├── start.mdc ← life arc setup command
├── weekly-checkin.mdc ← weekly check-in protocol
├── monthly-reset.mdc ← monthly reset protocol
├── concern-handling.mdc ← stuck? this handles it
└── depth-breadth.mdc ← breadth vs. anchor triage
This system is built on a few ideas that most productivity tools ignore:
1. The past as anchor. You are more motivated by seeing a gap between where you've been and where you need to go than by abstract future goals. This system keeps history visible.
2. Concern handling over motivation. When you don't want to do something, the problem is usually an unaddressed objection — not lack of discipline. The concern handling command works through every objection until none remain — and after setup, it does this using your documented failure modes, not a generic script.
3. The anchor + constellation model. You don't need to be excellent at everything. You need to be solid in one thing (the anchor: your career, your craft) and interesting in many (the constellation: fitness, relationships, curiosity, culture). The anchor funds the constellation. This system tracks both without collapsing one into the other.
4. Capacity is not fixed. A system that expects the same output from you every week will fail. High-energy weeks, crash periods, chaotic life circumstances — all of these change what's realistic. This system adjusts proposals to your energy level each week, and has a built-in crash mode for genuine low periods.
5. Systems over willpower. Willpower is finite and unreliable. This system is designed to require as little of it as possible — through lightweight check-ins, pre-set frameworks, and an AI that has already done the interpretation before you arrive.
6. Partial progress is progress. The Progress Log records partial completion. Monthly resets frame incomplete targets as "continuing," not "failed." The system is designed to be honest without being punishing.
All data lives locally in your markdown files. Nothing is sent anywhere except to the AI model you configure in Cursor (same as any Cursor conversation). No accounts. No subscriptions. No cloud sync unless you add it yourself.
This repo is configured so personal files are not uploaded by default:
- Personal logs, plans, and life arc files are ignored via
.gitignore - Historical monthly data is ignored
- Personal curriculum
.docxfiles are ignored
This system was built for one person's life. If you use it, your life will look different — different pillars, different anchors, different goals. The start command is designed to generate a system tailored to you, not a copy of the original.
If you build something useful — a new rule, an improved question flow, a better visualization format — PRs are welcome.
Built in Cursor. Runs on markdown and AI. Takes 15 minutes a week.