Mountains and veins

Geology has two layers. Mountains are the big things you care about. Veins are the concrete things you do under them. Almost everything in the app hangs off this distinction, so it is worth getting comfortable with.

Mountains

A mountain is an area of your life you want to make real progress on. It is intentionally broad and a little aspirational. You do not work on a mountain directly. You work on its veins, and the mountain moves as a result.

Good mountains:

• "Get healthy"
• "Become a better writer"
• "Learn the guitar"

A mountain has no metric and no daily floor of its own. It is a container. Its job is to group related veins so you can see, at a glance, whether a whole part of your life is getting attention.

Most people do well with three to five mountains. More than that and your attention spreads too thin to clear any floors.

Veins

A vein is the thing you actually do. It lives under exactly one mountain, it has a metric, and (for time and quantity veins) it has a daily floor.

Under "Get healthy" you might carve veins like:

• "Run" -- a time vein with a 20 minute floor
• "Strength training" -- a daily vein, just show up
• "Vegetables" -- a quantity vein, three servings

A vein is where the daily work and the daily floor live. When you log progress, you log it against a vein, not a mountain.

How to split them

A useful test: if you can do it in a single session and it repeats, it is probably a vein. If it is the reason several of those sessions matter, it is probably a mountain.

Do not over-structure. Start with one mountain and one vein, clear the floor for a week, and add more only when the existing ones feel like a steady habit. Geology rewards a small number of things done consistently far more than a large list you cannot keep up with.

Renaming and reorganizing

Mountains and veins can be renamed at any time, and a vein can be moved to a different mountain if your structure changes. Your carving history follows the vein, so you do not lose progress when you reorganize.