Empty Boat - Before You React
Taoist parables for hard days
Only for iPhone
Free · In‑App Purchases
iPhone
For the ten minutes before you do something you'll be explaining for a week. Write what happened, get a 2,300-year-old story and one thing to stop doing tonight.
Something happened. You're about to do something about it.
Empty Boat is what you open in that gap.
You write what happened. You get one story from Zhuangzi - a Taoist text from the 4th century BC - set against your situation, a question, and one thing to stop doing. Not "do this instead." One subtraction.
Want another angle, you ask for it. Most people stop at one.
Some nights there is nothing to reframe. You are tired and you are reading it correctly. When that is the case the app says so, and tries to name what you are carrying instead of handing you a parable that would only argue with you.
Seven days later it asks one question about what you wrote. That is what makes the log worth keeping - not a diary, a record of which things still mattered a week on.
WHAT IT ISN'T
A chatbot. There is nothing here to have a conversation with.
A meditation app. No timers, no breathing, no sounds.
A course in Taoism. It will not explain wu wei.
A streak. There is nothing to keep up.
WHAT IT WON'T DO
It will not tell you what to do. It will not comfort you. It will not say everything happens for a reason. It has nothing to say about your body, your eating, or your drinking, and it will tell you that rather than guess.
Your log stays on your phone.
Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
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Faster, clearer waiting states throughout the app.
The developer, Nguyen Manh, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Used to Track You
The following data may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies:
- Purchases
- Identifiers
- Usage Data
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Purchases
- User Content
- Identifiers
- Usage Data
- Diagnostics
Accessibility
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Information
- Seller
- Nguyen Manh
- Size
- 46.5 MB
- Category
- Lifestyle
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
16+
- 16+
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- EmptyBoat_weekly $5.99
- EmptyBoat_yearly $69.99
- EmptyBoat_Monthly $14.99
- Copyright
- © 2026-nguyen quang manh