The eighth chapter of James Clear’s book Atomic Habits talks about how the key to making a habit attractive is in the anticipation of the habit. The anticipation of doing something is more powerful, dopamine-wise, than the actual doing. Therefore, the key to creating new habits lies in associating new habits you want to do to habits you need to do.

For the purposes of integrating these habits with the Recurrer app, a hack to getting started is to have one trivial task that you include in your list that you’re already used to doing first thing in the morning. It could be ‘brush my teeth in the morning’ or ‘weigh myself’ or ‘check morning Twitter’ (reminder: follow @recurrertweets on Twitter if you’re so inclined (or Facebook if you’re otherwise inclined (or both, if you’re bothwise inclined!))).

The key is to have this first to-do item in your list be a quick task that’s already a morning ritual. Completing it gives you an excuse to open Recurrer first thing in the morning to check off the task. Once you’ve done this, your automated list of recurring tasks that you need to do that day pops up right in front of you.

From there, it’s simply a case of following the list. Work your way through the tasks, one at a time, moving things from ‘To Do Today’ to ‘Done Today’. (Or change the list if you need to – don’t forget you always have the ‘Star’ option available to bump something to the top of the list).

Once you’re done with the list for the day, you can reward yourself in an appropriate way. Or an inappropriate way. Who am I to judge? You’ve completed all your tasks – reward yourself however you please.

Clear says in Chapter 8 of Atomic Habits that you should approach your tasks with a thought process of ‘after (habit I need to do), I will (habit I want to do)’. Recurrer can make this even more powerful – after I complete my day’s worth of tasks I need to do, I can indulge myself however I please.