Attach the new thing to something already reliable

Nothing new should be asked to remember itself.

The most common failure in setting up a routine is expecting it to be triggered by memory. You decide to do something daily, you rely on noticing that it is time, and for a few days the novelty does the noticing for you. Then the novelty wears off, there is a busy morning, and the thing simply does not occur to you. It was never forgotten in any dramatic sense. It was just never attached to anything, and unattached actions have nothing to hold them in the day.

The alternative is to nominate an anchor: something that already happens without any effort from you, at roughly the same point, without fail. Boiling the kettle. Locking the front door. Putting the bag down. Sitting at the desk. The new action is then defined as what follows the anchor rather than as what happens at a certain time. This sounds like a small semantic difference and it is not. A time is a fact about the clock, which you must consult. An anchor is a fact about your body, which is already in the room.

Choose the anchor with some care, because not all reliable actions are equally useful. The best anchors are specific, occur once rather than continuously, and finish cleanly, so that there is an obvious moment afterwards. Having breakfast is a poor anchor because it is diffuse. Putting the breakfast plate in the sink is a good one because it has an edge. If the anchor happens three times a day you will hesitate over which occurrence counts, and hesitation is the very thing you are trying to remove.