What You Don’t Specify Will Be Decided for You

“What you don’t specify will be decided for you.”

I’ve been thinking about those nine words a lot lately.

Two weeks ago, one of our Today Matters team members, developer Cole Elzerman, participated in the Gloo AI Hackathon in Boulder, Colorado.

More than 1,000 builders submitted content to compete in this year’s event, bringing together some incredibly bright minds with a shared challenge:

How can we use AI and technology to make life better for people?

Cole was part of the team that built Fosterly, an AI-powered solution designed to help young people aging out of foster care connect with the resources, services, and people they need.

And they won the $100,000 grand prize.

Pretty incredible.

I’m proud of Cole, his teammates, and the work they put into building something that could genuinely change lives.

But beyond the win, something else from that event has stayed with me.

What Are We Building For?

One of the speakers was Tim Harrison, founder of the Coaching Innovation Lab, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a leader helping organizations use AI responsibly while keeping human potential and connection at the center.

Tim spoke about the extraordinary minds in the room and the opportunity we have to use this rapidly advancing technology for good.

But he also challenged people to think about something beyond what they’re building.

The life they’re building while they build it.

And then came that line.

What you don’t specify will be decided for you.

Tim was speaking about AI, but I couldn’t help thinking about how true that is of life itself.

If we don’t intentionally decide what matters most, something or someone else will decide for us.

Our schedules.

Our obligations.

Our devices.

Other people’s priorities.

The demands of the day.

And none of those things necessarily has our best interests, our relationships, or our faith at the center.

A Day Becomes a Life

I’ve spent much of my career working with data.

Data helps us see things we might otherwise miss. It reveals patterns, tells us what’s actually happening, and gives us information to make better decisions.

For years, I helped businesses use data that way.

But somewhere along the way, I started asking,

What if we could use data to help people see the truth about their own lives?

Think about it.

Most of us know what matters.

We want to put God first.

We want to be present with our families.

We want to take care of our health.

We want to do meaningful work.

We want to build relationships, contribute something good to the world, and look back on a life we’re proud of.

But then Monday happens.

And Tuesday.

And Wednesday.

We’re busy. We’re distracted. We’re putting out fires. We’re doing what needs to be done.

And before we know it, another week is gone.

Then another month.

Another year.

And those years eventually become our lifetime.

Not necessarily the life we intended to live.

Just the life that happened while we were busy living it.

That’s a sobering thought.

Especially when you realize that nobody else can make those choices for you.

Why We Built Ankor

That’s why we started Today Matters.

And it’s why we’re building Ankor.

Not because the world needs another app telling people to do more, be more productive, or squeeze another task into an already crowded day.

Quite the opposite.

We believe people need help seeing whether the life they’re actually living reflects the life they say they want to live.

Ankor is a voice-activated, Christian-values-coded AI assistant we’re building to help make that possible.

By bringing together information from the different parts of our lives, Ankor is designed to help us recognize patterns we might otherwise miss.

Where is our time going?

What’s getting our attention?

Are our daily choices reflecting our priorities?

Are we living in alignment with what we believe and value?

Not to make us feel guilty.

Not to judge.

And certainly not to let technology tell us how to live.

But to give us the opportunity to see the truth and decide what to do with it.

Information to help us SEE · RENEW · TRANSFORM our lives.

See what’s true.

Renew the way you think.

Transform the way you live.

One intentional adjustment at a time.

It’s a philosophy rooted in Romans 12:2, and it shapes both what we’re building and why we’re building it.

Because transformation doesn’t usually happen in one extraordinary moment.

More often, it happens through the small choices we make on very ordinary days.

The Kind of Future I Want to Help Build

Watching what happened at the Gloo AI Hackathon was encouraging.

Here were hundreds of people using their talent, creativity, and technical abilities to solve real human problems.

And Cole’s team was helping some of the most vulnerable young people in our communities.

That’s the kind of innovation I want to see more of.

Technology that serves people.

AI that strengthens human capability without replacing human responsibility.

Tools that help us become more present in our actual lives, rather than pulling us further away from them.

Because I don’t think the greatest measure of what we build will be how sophisticated the technology becomes.

I think it will be whether people’s lives are better because we built it.

And that brings me back to Tim’s words.

“What you don’t specify will be decided for you.”

We can apply that to AI.

We can apply it to business.

But maybe the most important place to apply it is to our own lives.

Because every day, whether we’re intentional about it or not, we’re making choices that are shaping our future.

And the future has a way of arriving faster than we think.

So here’s the question I present to you:

If someone could show you exactly how you’ve spent the last 30 days, would it reflect the life you say matters most?

And perhaps the harder question:

If nothing changes about the way you’re living today, will you be proud of the life those days eventually become?

That’s why Today Matters.

And that’s why we’re building Ankor.

Because your life, your legacy, is being built one today at a time.

Ankor. Because Today Matters.