I’ve been wondering what the difference is between a task and a habit.

Just to make things more interesting, how about the difference between a recurring task and a habit?

One might think that the signal thing about a habit is that it’s… well, habitual.

“Habitual” means, among other things, that you don’t have to be reminded of it by your PIM, I would guess. When the trigger for your habit hits, you do the habit (Charles Duhigg wrote the book on habits, literally; see his Power of Habit for more on triggers, etc.)

I have a morning routine that’s pretty much a habit by now, but I still go through a checklist every morning even though I probably have it by heart and it’s probably triggered just by getting up. (Atul Gawande wrote the book on checklists, the Checklist Manifesto)

Maybe my morning routine isn’t as habitual as I would like, or I wouldn’t need the checklist.

But I have a bunch of things in my PIM that are essentially habits or habit wannabes. Strength training twice a week. Blog postings for this blog.

And just to complicate things, I have a habit tracker, HabitHub, which I use only on my phone and tablet (not for any good reason; HabitHub only runs on Android)

What do I track in HabitHub? “Move the bod” (which is any exercise every day), “Only Connect” (which is some connection with someone every day) and “Deep Work” (which is some Deep Work every day). I do this just to keep a Seinfeld-like chain of virtue.

But then isn’t my “goal” then to move the bod, connect, and do deep work every day?

I feel like there’s some difference among these things, but I’m not sure I can put my finger on it.