Floating things without times
In Composed on iPhone, a fixed event is something that happens at a set time — an Apple Calendar appointment, a flight — and a floating thing is something you need to do without one. Both live in a single unified model with a timeType of either fixed or floating, which is why a dentist appointment at 2pm and “water the plants sometime today” sit in the same trusted system rather than in two competing apps. Floating things can carry an optional deadline, shown as a calm yellow card and never a red one — there is no urgency theater, and nothing to keep a streak alive.
This chapter is the one place in the method that explains the app’s data model in plain terms, because the fixed-versus-floating distinction is doing quiet work everywhere else. Once you see that everything in Composed is the same kind of object with one switch flipped, the boundary between “my calendar” and “my to-do list” — the boundary that usually means juggling two systems — simply isn’t there.
Fixed vs floating
The difference between fixed and floating is whether the thing owns a moment in time. A fixed event is anchored: the flight leaves at 9am whether or not you’re ready, so it gets a slot, a leave-by calculation, and time-based reminders. A floating thing is unanchored: “reply to the landlord” needs doing but not at any specific minute, so pinning it to 2:47pm would be a small lie that you’d then have to keep rescheduling when 2:47 came and went.
Most planners force one of these shapes onto the other. Calendars make you give every to-do a fake time; to-do apps strip the time off real appointments. Composed keeps the two honest by storing the distinction natively — timeType is .fixed for the things that happen at a time and .floating for the things that just need to happen. That single field is why the daily planning view can show your real schedule and your loose to-dos together without either one pretending to be the other.
Deadlines, not due dates
A floating thing can have a deadline, and Composed treats a deadline as a soft horizon rather than a hard verdict. It shows up as a yellow card — the same warm yellow used for selections throughout the app — and even after the date passes, it stays yellow. It never turns red, never escalates its color, never recolors the thing into a verdict to scold you. The thing you didn’t finish is simply still there, still doable, displayed in the same calm tone it always had.
This is a deliberate refusal of due-date theater. In most apps a due date is a trap: the moment it passes, the item flips to an angry color and the app starts treating you as a failure. That design produces exactly one behavior over time — you stop entering due dates, because they only ever make you feel bad. By keeping a passed deadline calm, Composed makes the deadline safe to use, which means you’ll actually use it. A deadline you trust not to punish you is a deadline you’ll set.
Parent-child hierarchy
Floating things can nest, with a parent thing holding child sub-items beneath it. “Plan the birthday party” can sit above “order the cake,” “send the invites,” and “buy candles,” so a single big loose intention becomes a small, ordered group instead of four disconnected entries cluttering your list. The hierarchy is just parentId linking a child to its parent — the same simple relationship the whole app uses.
The point of grouping isn’t organization for its own sake; it’s that a big floating thing is intimidating precisely because it’s vague, and breaking it into named children makes it approachable. You don’t “plan the party” in one heroic act — you order the cake, then later send the invites. Pairing this with the AI prep checklist means even the children can arrive with their own small prep, so the largest loose thing on your list becomes the most clearly mapped.
Completion without streak guilt
Finishing a floating thing is built to feel like relief, not like maintaining a record. When you complete an item, Composed gives you a five-second undo toast in case you tapped it by accident, then quietly archives it. There are no streaks, no badges, no completion percentage staring at you, no “you broke your 14-day streak” the morning life got in the way.
This matters more than it seems, because streak mechanics are how good planners turn into sources of shame. A streak makes the app’s approval contingent on perfection, so the first missed day doesn’t just cost a day — it makes the whole system feel like something you’ve already failed, which is the most common reason people quietly stop opening a planner, as covered in why you abandon every planner. Composed archives a finished thing and moves on. The reward for doing the thing is that the thing is done.
Why tasks was the wrong word
Composed calls them “things to do” rather than “tasks” on purpose, and the word change is part of the method, not branding. “Task” carries a faint whiff of obligation and the office — a task is assigned, tracked, and graded. “A thing to do” is just honest: it’s something on your plate, no heavier than that. The language keeps the floating layer feeling like life rather than like a job.
This is the same instinct underneath the whole calm planning approach — that the words a system uses shape how it feels to live inside it, the same way the difference between planning and remembering shaped Section 2. A planner that calls your evening errands “tasks” and turns missed ones red is quietly telling you that ordinary life is a performance review. Calling them things to do, and letting an unfinished one stay calmly yellow, says the opposite.
The practice this week: take one loose intention you’ve been carrying — the kind with no real time attached — and add it as a floating thing, with a deadline only if a real horizon exists. Notice that it doesn’t demand a fake time, and won’t punish you if the day slips. That’s the todo half of the system doing exactly what the calendar half does: holding the thing so you don’t have to.
Next: When life interrupts the system — the first chapter of recovery, for the day the plan doesn’t survive contact with reality.