Part One: Getting Started · Chapter 1

Setting Up Your World

The first time you open ATEND, it asks you a few questions before it does anything else. The whole setup takes under ten minutes. Most of what you configure here can be changed later — nothing is permanent. But getting it roughly right at the start means the system works for your actual life, not a generic one.

What onboarding does

Onboarding is a guided sequence that builds the foundation of your ATEND system. By the time it's done, you'll have a calendar connected, your roles defined, your working hours set, and your first Launchpad waiting. The whole thing is designed to be completed in a single sitting.

The ATEND method — in plain language

Three illustrated screens give you a brief orientation: what the inbox is for, how the Launchpad works, and what the daily and weekly rhythms look like. You're not expected to understand everything here — it's context, not instruction. The guide you're reading now is the instruction.

~2 minutes

Connect your calendar

ATEND connects to Google Calendar or Apple Calendar. All your existing events sync in — appointments, meetings, anything on the calendar — and appear on the time strip from day one. The connection is bidirectional: appointments you create in ATEND appear in your calendar, and events you create in your calendar appear in ATEND.

~1 minute

Name your roles

You'll define between two and five roles to start — the distinct life areas that represent how your time and attention are actually divided. The system prompts with examples, but you name them in your own words. More can be added later up to a maximum of seven. Existing roles can be renamed or retired at any time.

~2 minutes

Set your working hours

When does your workday start and end? Which day and time do you prefer for your Weekly Architecture Session? These settings drive the morning setup trigger, the Daily Close notification, and the weekly planning prompt. All of them are adjustable later in Settings.

~1 minute

Your first Big Three

Before the Launchpad opens for the first time, you're asked: what three outcomes would make this week a genuine success? These become your Big Three — the weekly anchors that shape which tasks surface in the Now list and how the fit score weights your priorities. You don't need to overthink them. Three things that would actually matter. That's it.

~2 minutes

Your first Launchpad

The system creates two or three sample tasks to show you what the Launchpad looks like with real content. These are yours to keep, modify, or delete. By the time onboarding is complete, you're looking at a working system — not an empty shell.

~1 minute

Your roles

Roles are the most important structural decision you'll make during setup. They're the life areas that everything else organizes around — the distinct roles you play, the distinct contexts your life runs in.

A role isn't a category. It's a role. The person wearing the Airbnb role is in a different headspace than the person wearing the Book role — different relationships, different stakes, different energy, different consequences when things go wrong.

Some examples of what roles look like in practice:

Airbnb

Ranch

Book

Consulting

Medical

USCIS

Household

Personal

Yours will look different. The question to ask isn't "what categories do I have?" — it's "what are the distinct areas of my life that each deserve their own attention?" Most people land somewhere between four and seven.

What roles are not

A role is not a project. "USCIS I-485 filing" is a project. "USCIS" is a role — the life area that project, and any future immigration-related work, lives in. A role is not a tag you apply freely. You have a small fixed set that reflects your actual life structure. New things go into existing roles — you don't create a new role every time a new topic arrives.

How roles work in the system

Every task, project, reminder, and appointment is assigned to a role. The role determines the color coding throughout the app — on task rows, on the time strip, on contact badges. Once you know your role colors, you can read the Launchpad at a glance without reading a word.

Roles also drive the neglect detection system. If a role has had no activity for an extended period, the system surfaces it during the Weekly Architecture Session — not as a criticism, but as a signal. The Ranch role has been quiet for three weeks. What's going on there?

Start with fewer than you think you need

It's tempting to create a role for everything. Resist it. Start with three or four and add more only when the absence of a role is actually causing a problem. A role that covers two adjacent areas is better than two roles that are hard to distinguish. You can always split them later.

Connecting your calendar

Calendar connection is required for ATEND to work properly. Without it, the time strip on the Launchpad is empty, the fit score doesn't know what's committed, and the system can't compute your sovereign windows — the free time that's actually available for directed work.

The connection happens during onboarding and takes about a minute. ATEND imports the past 90 days of calendar history as read-only reference data, then begins bidirectional sync going forward. You don't need to do anything to maintain the connection — events you add to your calendar appear in ATEND automatically, and vice versa.

If your work calendar is separate from your personal calendar — a company Google Workspace calendar alongside a personal iCloud calendar, for example — you can connect both. ATEND merges them into a single timeline, with each event tagged to its source calendar.

Importing contacts

Contact import is optional during onboarding and available later from Settings. ATEND doesn't ask you to import all your device contacts — it would take too long and most of them don't belong in a productivity system. Instead, import is selective: you search by name and pick the people who actually matter to your daily work and life.

For each contact you import, you assign a relationship type — family, close friend, colleague, vendor, professional — and optionally a role and a role label. The system scans the birthday field on imported contacts and offers to create reminder entries automatically. It also checks your existing projects for people you've named and offers to formalize them as contacts: "You have 'Maria, cleaning crew' in three projects. Want to create a contact for her?"

People in your system get context notes, connection cadences, open task tracking, and significant date reminders. The People tab in the navigation is where they all live. Chapter 18 covers the full relationship maintenance system.

Your working hours and weekly rhythm

ATEND uses your configured workday start and end times to know when to show the Launchpad and when to stand down. Outside your workday hours, the app defaults to the inbox and the late capture screen. The morning setup runs at your workday start time. The Daily Close notification fires at your workday end time.

The defaults are 8:00 AM start, 5:30 PM end, with a Sunday evening Weekly Architecture Session. All three are adjustable in Settings at any time — the system adapts to non-standard schedules, shift work, and the reality that workdays vary. If you're a night owl who starts at 10 and works until 7, set that. The system works with how you actually live.

On importing from another system

If you're migrating from Todoist, Things, Apple Reminders, or another task manager, import is available from Settings → Import after onboarding is complete. It's deliberately not offered during onboarding itself — your first experience with ATEND should be building something new. Importing before you understand the methodology produces overwhelm rather than continuity. Give it a week first. Chapter 20 covers the guided migration in full.

What you'll see when setup is complete

When onboarding finishes, you land on a Launchpad that already has real content. Your calendar events are on the time strip. Your Big Three are set. Two or three sample tasks are in the Now list — real enough to show you what the system feels like in use.

The changes that onboarding makes to how ATEND behaves:

🗓

Calendar connected

Your time strip shows real events. Sovereign windows are computed from your actual schedule. The fit score knows what's committed and what's available.

🎩

Roles defined

Every task, project, and appointment can be assigned to a role. The color system is live. Neglect detection is tracking activity across your roles from day one.

⏰

Working hours set

The morning setup trigger, Daily Close notification, and Weekly Architecture prompt all know when to fire. The app knows the difference between your workday and everything else.

🎯

Big Three established

Your weekly outcomes are set. The fit score is already boosting tasks connected to them. The system knows what you said matters this week and is actively advocating for it.

📥

Inbox ready

Your personal capture address is live. The floating + button works from any screen. Every capture channel is open. Anything you think of goes here first.

Everything that follows in this guide — the daily rhythm, the weekly rhythm, focus mode, task management — builds on the foundation set here. Take the ten minutes to do it properly. Everything works better when the structure underneath is right.

In the next chapter, we'll look at the inbox — what it is, how to get things into it, and what happens when they arrive.