Donna Glossary: Every Word Donna Uses, Explained - Donna

Donna keeps its vocabulary small, and all of it is on this page. Each term gets one line; where a term has its own page, the entry links to it for the full picture.

Term	What it means
Action	The single next step toward one of your Outcomes, built fresh each time you need one. Act on it, skip it, or shrink it, and Donna builds the next one. See Actions.
Area	The part of life an Outcome belongs to, like work, health, or a side project. Each Area has a name and a color. See Outcomes.
Brain dump	Getting everything out of your head at once, by talk or text. Donna sorts it after: bigger threads it offers to shape into an Outcome with you, and loose one-offs go to Capture. See Capture.
Capture	A holding place for loose ends: a stray next step, a quick note, a task from a connected app. Donna offers items back when they fit your day. See Capture.
Check-in	A light touch from Donna: a small question with a couple of tappable answers, or the morning’s opening. See Check-ins.
Cycle	A short commitment toward one Outcome: a window of a few days and a small count of Actions, reviewed when the window closes. See Cycles.
Grounding exercise	A short breathing or sensory exercise (like 5-4-3-2-1) Donna offers when you are wound up. Start one anytime from the wind glyph in the top-right corner, or the menu glyph in the bottom bar on a phone. See Settling down.
Landed	The state of an Outcome whose success picture has come true. Landed Outcomes stay visible rather than disappearing. See Outcomes.
Memory	The context Donna keeps from your work: drafts and details saved with their Outcome, plus patterns it picks up as you work together. See Memory.
Now / Next / Later / Parked / Landed	The five states an Outcome can sit in. Now, Next, and Later are the stages of in-progress work, from front-burner to the longer arc; Parked and Landed have their own entries in this table. The outcomes view groups all five into three rooms: going on, resting, and landed. See Outcomes.
Nudge	A reach-out Donna sends between conversations, under enforced rules: quiet hours, a minimum gap, backing off when you are low. See Check-ins and nudges.
Outcome	Something durable you are trying to land, anchored by a success picture. Donna’s top-level tracked unit. See Outcomes.
Parked	An Outcome set down for now. Parking sets no countdown and marks nothing late, and you can pick it back up later.
Habit	A saved task you can start with one tap from the start list, with an optional rhythm in words. See Habits.
Routine / Recurring task	The former names for a Habit. “Routine” was the concept and “Recurring tasks” was the start list’s label for it; both now read Habit. See Habits.
Session	One sitting on one Action in the work view. A few app labels still read “session”; these docs say Action throughout. See Actions.
Success picture	A concrete image, in your own words, of what “done” looks like for an Outcome. Donna keeps every Action and Cycle pointed at it.
The before	An optional snapshot, in your words, of where things stood when an Outcome began. When it lands, Donna shows the before next to where you ended up.
The work view	The screen that opens when you start an Action: a count-up timer and a real editor, with Donna a tap away if you get stuck. See Working an Action.