7 Decisions That Made Our Life Feel Intentional

It is Friday. I still have half-built projects on my hard drive — I wrote about that honestly in I Have About 10 Half-Built Projects and Almost None of Them Have Launched. But when I step back from the builder mess, our life feels more intentional than it used to. Not perfect. Not finished. On purpose.

Intentional living is not a Pinterest board. It is not quitting your job in a montage. It is a stack of decisions — some boring, some scary, some that only make sense years later. This post is the list version: seven choices that made life feel designed instead of default, plus a short Friday audit you can run today.

What intentional living actually means

For us, it means choosing the life we want and letting the calendar, the bank account, and the businesses bend toward that — instead of waking up inside everyone else’s default script.

Design over default. That is the whole game.

7 decisions that made our life feel intentional

1. We ran a life audit before going location-independent

Travel does not fix a messy life. It magnifies it. Before we leaned harder into portable work, we audited money, subscriptions, memberships, and the calendar — while we still had a home base as a buffer.

That audit is in Do a Life Audit Before You Go Location Independent. The short version: cancel what you do not use, keep what matches how you actually live, and stop paying for the person you were three years ago.

2. We optimized for work-from-anywhere, not work-from-everywhere

Freedom is not constant motion. It is the option to move without breaking the business. That meant cleaner systems, fewer anchors, and honest conversations about what has to work from a laptop in a new city.

The bigger family and business redesign is in What We're Changing So We Can Work From Anywhere. Intentional living, for us, includes saying no to tools and habits that only work when you are in one zip code.

3. We bought Disney passes before we left Orlando

That sounds like a splurge until you read the reasoning. For our anniversary — and our last season with a permanent Orlando home — Sarah and I got annual passes. Not because we are trying to be influencers at the castle. Because we were betting on how we actually live: dates, memories, and using the city while we still have it.

The full story is in Why We Got Annual Disney Passes Before Leaving Orlando. Intentional living sometimes looks like spending on the life you are in, not the one you think you should want.

4. We built relationship-first businesses

Transactional businesses can scale. Relationship-first businesses travel better — with people, trust, and referrals that do not reset every quarter. Sports Mentorship, Ideal Homeschool, and the broader Knup ecosystem were built around humans first, funnels second.

I wrote the posture in Why Relationship-First Businesses Beat Transactional Ones. When life is in motion, warm relationships are not a nice extra. They are infrastructure.

5. We separated work lanes at home

Working with your spouse is a gift until home becomes a meeting that never ends. We had to get explicit about who owns which lane — on the businesses and in the house — so marriage stays marriage and work stays work.

That boundary work is in Working With Your Spouse Without Turning Home Into a Meeting. Intentional living includes protecting the rooms that are not for revenue.

6. We cut clutter — digital and mental

Domains you will never build. Subscriptions you forgot. Projects that eat attention without shipping. Clutter is not only physical. A bloated portfolio or a pile of almost-launched ideas is life clutter with an invoice.

I have written about the domain version in The Real Cost of Owning Too Many Domains and the project version in half-built projects. Saying no to inventory — names, repos, “someday” stacks — is how you make room for what you are actually building.

7. We chose experiences and people over looking busy

Busy is the easiest default. Intentional living asks what you would keep if nobody could see your calendar. For us, that has meant family time, travel that matches our goals, and businesses that support the life — not the other way around.

That is not anti-ambition. It is anti-performance. We still work hard. We just try to work on purpose.

What intentional living still costs

None of this is free. Intentionality means more decisions, not fewer. Sometimes slower money. Sometimes saying no to good ideas because they do not fit the life you chose. Sometimes admitting you are great at starting and still learning to finish — projects and all.

We are not done. Intentional living is maintained, not achieved once. Friday is a good day to check the stack.

A 5-minute Friday audit

You do not need a retreat. You need three honest questions:

1. What on your calendar this week happened by default? Meetings you kept because they were easy. Subscriptions that renewed because canceling felt like work. Habits you never chose — just inherited.
2. What are you still paying for that does not match how you live? Gym, software, memberships, domains, the identity of a version of you that moved on.
3. What would you double down on if you were being honest? One relationship, one trip, one business lane, one habit. Not ten. One.

Write the answers. Pick one change for next week. That is intentional living in practice — not a manifesto, a edit.

Why we are building Rewritten around this

I recorded 245 episodes of the Knup Sports Show. I loved those conversations. That chapter is retired. The next one is Rewritten — a show about people intentionally living life differently. Interviews. Topical conversations. Honest stories about rewriting the script on purpose.

This blog post is the premise in list form. The podcast will be the longer conversation. If you want the gear-and-workflow side of launching it, that is in How to Start a Podcast With a Simple Setup.

Final thoughts

Seven decisions made our life feel more intentional. A life audit. Work-from-anywhere systems. Disney passes while Orlando still counted. Relationship-first businesses. Spouse lanes at home. Less clutter. More real experiences.

Your list will look different. That is the point. Intentional living is not copying our choices — it is refusing to live on autopilot and making one honest edit at a time.