The fourteenth chapter of James Clear’s Atomic Habits discusses how to rid yourself of bad habits by making them difficult to do. He recommends putting impediments in front of them, by locking in your options beforehand. This is extreme creation of friction.

One way to accomplish this with the Recurrer app is to be as comprehensive as possible with what you put in there. If you build a habit that Recurrer is where you go to work out what you should do next in your big list of tasks to be done, and if you’re sensible enough to not put things you don’t want to do in there, then soon you’ll automatically be skipping those unwanted habits and working instead on the tasks that you get closer to your long-term goals.

A handy trick – particularly in the early days when you’re just getting started with Recurrer – is to add tasks after you’ve done them, if they’re not already on the list. Especially if it’s a recurring task you want to make a regular part of your life. Put it in the list even if it’s something you don’t think you need a to-do list to remind you of. It all helps to make your task list as comprehensive as possible. This, in turn, helps build the habit of looking to the big list of tasks (suitably sorted by the Recurrer algorithm) to determine what to do next. And that will make it easier to ignore the tasks you shouldn’t be doing.

Clear also recommends in this chapter looking for one-off options that create long-term regular positive effects and strongly consider investing in them. Investment in one-off purchases that build better ongoing behaviour is almost always money well spent. Speaking of which, the Recurrer app unlocks unlimited tasks for a veritable pittance. So, you know what to do…