Tend to the parts of your life that make you, you.
Tend is a quiet daily ritual, and a well that fills as you look after what matters most to you. No streaks to keep, and nothing to lose.
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Who it’s for
For anyone who’s been running on empty for a while &
is ready to fill back up again.
Most of us look after everything except ourselves. Tend is for the moment you want that to change. Tend to what matters most, and you’ll show up better everywhere else.
Your work
Your family
Your friends
Yourself
How it works
Three small moments a day. That’s the whole system.
A few minutes, not your whole day. Start the morning with intention, close the evening with reflection, and let Sunday show you the week.
Your well
Fifteen stones. Choose the three to six that feed you.
Your well is made of the parts of your life that actually fill you up. Each stone fills as you tend to it through the week, and turns gold when it reaches what you were aiming for.
The People
3
Friendship
The people who knew you before the work did.
Love
The relationship you’d miss most if you kept putting it last.
Family
The people you didn’t choose. Easy to assume, easy to postpone.
Your Well-being
7
Movement
Walking, lifting, stretching — whatever gets the body going.
Sleep
The hours that decide how tomorrow feels.
Nourishment
Eating like someone you’re taking care of.
Time outside
Weather on your face, no screen in your hand.
Spiritual practice
Prayer, meditation, or the quiet you practice on purpose.
Solitude
Time that belongs to no one else.
Being present
Right here, actually here — not three tasks ahead.
Personal Development
5
Craft practice
The work itself, with nothing riding on it.
Personal projects
A project that answers to no one but you.
Reading
Long-form attention. Books, essays, anything slow.
Learning
Something new enough to still be a little hard.
Hobbies
Something you do just because you like it — skill optional.
These are the three places things land in a life. Yours might all sit in one.
Whenever you come back
Miss a day. Miss a week. Nothing breaks.
There’s no streak to lose and no red X waiting for you. Tend notices the quiet, says so kindly, and picks up wherever you are today.
“Gamifying stuff is one of those things that ruins our mental health already. We don’t need to keep doing that.”
Tyler · from our research
Yesterday went quiet. That’s alright — nothing broken, nothing to fix. Just tend what you can today.
Your well · this week
Solitude waited for you this week. It will still be here.
Built different, on purpose
Things your to-do list can’t do.
Tend is small on purpose. Each of these exists because a to-do list, a habit tracker and a journal app each get one part of this wrong.
This month’s direction
For the next 30 days, I’m making room for movement.
21 days left
A direction, not a target.
Thirty days leaning on one stone. Partway through, a Wednesday pulse asks how it’s going, so the end of the month shows an arc instead of a verdict.
9:30 AM
Coffee with Paul
6:00 PM
Evening walk
7:30 PM
Mom’s birthday dinner
Your calendar, beside your well.
Tend reads your phone’s calendar and tags what it can. A call with a friend fills Friendship, an evening walk fills Movement. It only ever reads, and never changes a thing.
Notes
At lunch today I had a really great chat about relationships. A few things I’d like to remember…
Nothing here is asked for, and nothing is ever replaced.
For the things worth remembering.
Both check-ins put a question in front of you. Some days, what needs writing doesn’t answer either. Notes is the one place with no prompt at all, and every note is kept.
47-day streak
Tending since August.
No streaks. No scores. On purpose.
A streak punishes a gap and can be lost. Tend remembers when you started instead, so over months you can see how long you’ve kept showing up for yourself. Miss a day, because you’re human, and that doesn’t go anywhere.
What makes Tend different
Not a better to-do list. Not a to-do list at all.
Notion, Sunsama and habit trackers are great at helping you do more. Tend is for the other side of the ledger: refilling what the work takes out of you.
It’s for people who feel guilty resting and guilty not resting, and who’ve quit every app that made them feel behind.
Every other app
Tend
Optimize
Tend
Track streaks
Notice what fills you
Hit targets
Set a direction
Grind
Restore
Report card
Mirror
Output
Input
The research
We sat down with 32 people. Here’s what they said.
32
market research interviews while building Tend, on how often people tend to life outside work, what gets in the way, the apps they’ve tried, and why filling your own cup matters
10/10
beta testers responded positively to the goal and direction Tend is heading
4
people in the interviews described exactly what Tend is, and what they wanted from an app, before they knew it existed
“It’s a constant balance you’re always working at. If you don’t put the work into it, it just doesn’t happen.”
Josh
“You don’t realize how much you’ve really been focusing on work, and not as much on your social life and family life.”
Bailey
“If you never refill the well, you’re going to be digging through the bottom, trying to squeeze water out of a rock.”
Connor
“If you can visualize it and see that you have done a good balance of things, you should feel good.”
Jasmine
Is this a habit tracker?
No. There are no streaks, scores or red Xs. Habit trackers measure what you did. Tend notices how you’re doing and what’s been feeding you, and leaves the judging out of it.
What happens if I miss a day? Or a week?
How much time does it take?
Who is it for?
Where does my data go?
When can I get it, and what will it cost?
Why this exists
Hi, I’m Carlo.
I’m a filmmaker. I also run a YouTube channel, host a podcast called The Creative Gap, and I’m big into health and wellness. For years, every productivity app I tried treated all of that like one long to-do list.
“How do I make all these parts of me speak to each other?”
The question on my whiteboard that started this.
So before building anything, I sat down with 32 working individuals in varying fields and asked how they keep from running dry. Most didn’t have a system. Every one of them had quit at least one app that made them feel behind.
Tend is what came out of a need for myself, and understanding what others really need in their life. It’s the thing I wanted when I lost sight of myself at times, and I hope it helps you live more meaningfully.
Gian Carlo Stigliano · Founder
Live more meaningfully.
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