Intentions

What organizes behavior when there's no boss and no price?

Mantra

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare

The Third Mode

Three ways to coordinate exist:

Mode	Coordinates via	What it produces	Failure mode
Markets	Price signals	Efficient allocation	Externalities, short-termism
Hierarchies	Command	Aligned execution	Agency death, fragility
Shared Intention	Pictures	Autonomous coordination	Drift (if not re-articulated)

Markets fail when what matters can't be priced. Hierarchies fail when central planning can't adapt. Shared intention fails when the dream goes fuzzy.

Intention is coordination infrastructure, not vibes.

When people internalize the same intention:

• Their local decisions become compatible without command
• They recognize matching opportunities faster (collective luck)
• Feedback loops tighten (they know what signal to measure)
• Trust compounds (they demonstrate aligned behavior over time)

This is how healthy cultures actually work. The intention coordinates. Management becomes optional.

How Intention Organizes

DREAM / INTENT (what we're moving toward)
    │
    │ creates shared filter
    │ "does this serve the intention?"
    ↓
ENGINEERING (discipline of focus)
    │
    │ translates dream into pictures
    │ derives what to build, what to ignore
    ↓
ATTENTION (the only resource you control)
    │
    │ points at controllables only
    │ releases what you can't influence
    ↓
AGENCY (flow state)
    │
    │ intent balanced with attention
    │ creating luck through pattern recognition
    ↓
LOOPS → STANDARDS → PLATFORM (compound)

Without clear intention upstream, everything downstream becomes noise:

• Standards become bureaucracy
• Data becomes distraction
• Models optimize for the wrong thing
• Flow becomes grinding

The Stoic thread: You can't control outcomes. You can control attention. But unfocused attention scatters. Engineering focuses it. But engineering toward what? The dream provides direction.

Engineer the Dream

Clear intention isn't enough. It has to be engineered into pictures that others can see, believe, and contribute to—not follow blindly.

What you build	What it does
Clear picture of the problem	People recognize their own pain
Clear picture of the alternative	People see where they want to go
Clear picture of the path	People see how they can contribute
Clear picture of their role	People see themselves in the story

The pictures can't be so complete that there's nothing left to contribute. If every detail is specified, you've built a machine for followers. The gaps are features:

• Gap in how → invites engineering creativity
• Gap in where → invites local adaptation
• Gap in who → invites people to cast themselves

You're building a frame, not a mold. Enough structure to align, enough space to own.

Engineer the Dream → clarity invites contribution Dream the Engineering → implementation reveals gaps Loop → refined picture, better questions

Visualization and Luck

People who visualize clearly don't just "manifest." They carry a rich template of desired futures that makes them faster at spotting matching opportunities.

Visualization trains pattern recognition:

• You can't recognize an opportunity unless you have a picture of what you're looking for
• The clearer the picture, the faster you spot the match
• "Luck" is often just faster pattern matching

Belief enables action under uncertainty:

• Every interesting move happens before proof exists
• The gap between "this might work" and "this will work" is bridged by conviction
• Pessimists are often right about obstacles but wrong about outcomes

At group scale, shared pictures and aligned belief expand the collision surface where opportunities can emerge. That's collective luck—and it's engineerable.

Evolution

Attention is all you need if you don't have a soul. Egoless intention coupled with flow of attention drives evolution.

• Evolution as Emergent Purpose: Evolution isn't just random selection; it's a process in which living systems develop purposeful functions and agency, manifesting a drive to realize their potential.
• Awareness Fuels Evolutionary Creativity: Organisms exhibit a form of non-conscious awareness, allowing them to perceive possibilities, harness randomness, experiment with new strategies, and adapt creatively.
• Potential is Realized Through Collective Intelligence: Cells and multicellular organisms behave intelligently, solving problems, self-organizing, and working collectively to adapt, survive, and thrive.
• Structure Constrains and Channels Intent: Life's potential manifests when emergent structures and boundary conditions allow the system to focus and channel creative processes—transforming unpredictable possibilities into actionable reality.
• Purpose and Creativity Are Objective: Purpose isn't just a human feeling or a religious concept; it's a testable, objective feature of living systems. Evolution brings about purpose and agency as emergent, scientifically investigable properties.

The Internet of Intent

The next evolution is not about capturing attention but enabling intentions.

Internet of Attention	Internet of Intent
Capture eyeballs	Enable action
Platform extracts value	Protocol distributes value
User is product	User is agent
Optimize for engagement	Optimize for outcome

This shift will be powered by AI, blockchain, and decentralized infrastructure to create a frictionless environment for fulfilling purposeful actions.

The chains worth building are the ones where intentions align—where dreaming together precedes building together.

Aligned Intentions

What is the power of aligned attention and intention?

It solves coordination problems that neither markets nor hierarchies can:

• Markets create externalities because price doesn't capture everything that matters
• Hierarchies kill agency because command substitutes for alignment
• Shared intention creates autonomous coordination—people make compatible decisions independently because they're pulling in the same direction

The Māori concept of whakapapa embeds this: you inherit intentions from ancestors, carry them forward, pass them on. Intention as continuous thread, not individual choice. This is how living systems maintain coherence across time.

The Test

How do you let your intentions guide you without your ego taking control?

By engineering pictures clear enough that others can see them—and then releasing attachment to how they interpret and extend them. The intention survives your ego when it lives in others.

Are you willing to put your intention where your attention is?

Context

• Flow — What happens when intent and attention align
• VVFL — Intent shapes culture, culture shapes standards
• Foundations — What you actually control
• Visualization — Building the template
• Optimism and Luck — Pattern recognition at scale
• Players — Who carries the intention forward

Links

• The Power of Intention to Transform Reality
• Attention Is All You Need — The transformer paper