The method behind the app
The Backbone Alignment Method
A simple loop for staying pointed at the life you meant to build: name what matters, log the effort, and read each week against it — for years, not weeks.
Free to start. No credit card. Your data stays yours.
It started as a stack of notebooks
The method came out of a problem, not a whiteboard. Post-its, notebooks, and spreadsheets held up fine — until the first time life got in the way: a holiday, a winter, a flu. Then the thread was gone, and with it any sense of whether the last few months had pointed anywhere. The idea underneath is small: you don't need to control everything. You need something that remembers what you said mattered, and puts the picture back in front of you when you've lost the thread. Written down, refined, and turned into software, that became the Backbone Alignment Method — the loop everything in Keep The Process runs on.
Three ideas it rests on
A record beats a memory
Memory is a bad scorekeeper — it flatters the good weeks and forgets the drift. A short, honest record of what you actually did is the only thing that can tell you the truth later.
Effort only means something against an intention
Twelve kilometres run and $340 spent are just numbers. Read against what you said your life was for, the same numbers become a verdict: on-track, or drifting. The intention is what turns data into a signal.
Alignment is a loop, not a finish line
You never 'complete' a life. So the method isn't a plan you finish — it's a loop you keep: decide, live, reflect, adjust, and again. The point is coming back, not never missing.
The loop: backbone, mirror, bilan, adjust
Four moves, on repeat. Three of them take seconds a day; one takes a few minutes a week.
- 1Backbone
Name what matters
Pick a life domain, a value that holds there, and one sentence you want true a year from now. That's your backbone — the thing the rest of the loop reads against. It starts small, and you revise it as you learn.
- 2Daily mirror
Log the effort, get a mirror back
Thirty seconds a day: log what you did — or that you rested, or nothing at all. Each entry returns a plain mirror, computed from what you typed. It only observes; it never scores you.
- 3Weekly bilan
Read the week against the backbone
Once a week, the bilan reads your logged effort against what you said mattered and names it: on-track, or drifting — always with the number it's based on, never a verdict on nothing. 'Bilan' is the French word for a reckoning; we kept it.
- 4Adjust
Change the effort, or change the backbone
The verdict is information, not a scolding. Maybe the week needs to change. Maybe the backbone was wrong and needs rewriting. Either way you adjust, and the loop starts again — that's the whole method.
The promises the method keeps
A method is only as trustworthy as the lines it won't cross. These are ours.
No number we didn't compute from your own entries
Every receipt and every verdict is visibly built from what you typed. There are no invented figures, no borrowed averages, no 'people like you' — if we can't compute it from your record, we don't show it.
No streaks, no loss framing, no guilt
A missed day is just a missed day. The method never counts what you lost or warns you not to break a chain. Coming back is the whole game, so a lapse resets nothing and the week starts where you are.
One daily check-in, one weekly bilan — that's the whole budget
The only reminders are the appointment and your own named intention. No nagging about absence, no manufactured urgency. Ignore the daily nudge three times and it steps back to Sundays only, on its own.
Effort is always free; only depth is paid
Logging, notes, following a program, your weekly read — free, always. What you pay for is the long view: where your life is heading across months and years, read across every domain at once.
Questions, answered
Is this the same as journaling or a habit tracker?
It shares parts of both, but the point is different. Journaling records; a habit counter counts. The Backbone Alignment Method adds the missing half — reading what you recorded against what you said your life was for, and giving you a weekly verdict you can act on.
Do I have to plan my whole life before I start?
No. You start with one domain, one value, and one sentence — three taps and a line — and the day always ends with one real log. The backbone grows and gets rewritten as you go; a wrong first guess is expected, not a problem.
What if I miss days or whole weeks?
Nothing breaks. There are no streaks to lose and nothing to catch up. The week resumes where you are, and the next bilan simply names the gap. Coming back is the part that counts.
Is the method free?
The whole loop is free: backbone, daily mirror, and weekly bilan. Premium is only for the long view — your alignment over months and years, read across every domain at once.
One quiet note, when there's something worth reading
No drip campaign, no daily nudge. Just the occasional letter on staying aligned with what matters — the same idea the app is built on. Unsubscribe in one click.
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Plant a backbone today. Read your first week on Sunday.
Free to start, no card required. The whole loop is free, forever.