Recipes
Track habits
A list that unchecks itself every day.
The scenario
You want to do five things most days. A to-do app is wrong for this, because unfinished habits carrying forward turns yesterday's miss into today's debt.
Set it up once
- 1
Make one list with your habits
Five, at most. See make a list.
- 2
Turn on daily reset
So it comes back unchecked every morning and nothing carries. See routines.
- 3
Bookmark it or put it on Home
A routine you have to look for is not a routine. See customize Home.
Why not to-dos on your day
This is the whole point of the recipe.
A habit on your day is a to-do, and unfinished to-dos carry forward. Miss three days and you have three copies of "stretch" following you around, which is precisely the guilt loop that kills habit tracking. See carry-over.
A routine list leaves no trace when you miss a day. That is the correct behaviour for a habit.
Make it yours
- Add a repeating reminder if you need a prompt at a specific time. See repeating reminders.
- Watch your streak if that motivates you, and hide it if it does not. See streaks.
- Turn on a completion sound. The feedback loop matters more here than anywhere else. See confetti and sounds.
What this looks like after a month
Some days all five, most days two or three, a few days none. And crucially, no accumulating list of failures, which is the thing that usually ends the experiment in week three.