Intent is not precise, nor is it linear, it loosely aims for the direction you plan while bringing about many echoes, counterpoints, and unintended results. 

Their effects continue long after the flame of their original intent has died out, often surprising the author, who has already moved on to something else and forgotten the purpose of the initial action.

Every project comes with child themes, effects that blossom around it, coexist with it and further its intricacies, a result of the greater context coming together to create your desired outcome. 

Their unexpected scions never follow your plan, and keep growing in complexity like sprawling tomato plants, until they require too much effort to produce. 

They start to fade away when their initial motivation fades.

Sometimes the number and magnitude of offshoots dwarfs the original idea and humbles it with their life-changing outcomes (apps, electrical appliances and antibiotics are good examples), while at other times, they drown it in a spawn of unnecessary and bizarre derivatives. 

In either case, a whole range of objects, exuberant in its variety, comes into existence, just like a new species.

This progeny gets surrounded by a large number of related concepts, specific tools and amusing asides, which eventually split from their source to lead their own ironic lives, often at odds with it: fish tacos, dessert pizza, adult coloring books, his and hers items, grapples, valet trays, tea cozies, labradoodles, sporks, glamping, none of them echo their original purpose.

These unexpected oddballs come packaged together with the desired result, like the salt and pepper you must always buy together, even if you don’t need the salt.

They are the action hero figurines to your movie, the seldom used tureens to your soup bowls, the extra hardware to accompany furniture with assembly required. 

You may not have asked for them, but they will arrive anyway, because, albeit unexpected, they are secondary outcomes of your intent.

In conclusion, what are the points worth remembering?

1. Every idea generates many sub-themes which split off to exist separately from the concept that birthed them.
2. Ideas crossbreed to produce surprising hybrids.
3. The offshoots of an idea can sometimes be much larger and more useful than the original.
4. You can never anticipate all the outcomes an intent will produce: echoes and variations that were not initially planned for form as the bigger picture comes together to achieve the desired outcome.
5. Nothing happens in a bubble. Ideas form their own fractal patterns.
6. The unexpected effects of your plans are unavoidable; they are secondary outcomes of the original intent.