universal habits

the biggest recurring idea across multiple captures: a system that makes all your small habits visible, contextual, and adaptive. the James Clear insight — make it visible — but taken to its technical extreme. the core problem: having many small habits that would improve life (spray shoes, don't swear, eat fruit in the morning, think of other perspectives) but it is hard to remember all of them and get reminders at the right moments.

the proposed solution is an LLM-based assistant that has access to many information readers (location, time, weather, calendar) and puts together contextual triggers. example: "when harrison gets home from 11am to 3pm and its raining, bring the socks inside." or "when jacob gets within 10m of home and the temperature is very high, xyz." this is essentially IFTTT but with automatic rule creation — the LLM can make an initial guess at what combinations would work and then refine through data ("are you awake?").

the hardest habits are mindset shifts like "think of other perspectives" or "think before speak" — these cannot simply be reminded. one rough solution is randomly timed reminders. a deeper exploration considered wearable devices (pad stuck to arm, watch-but-better) as input modalities. the invoking/imprinting thoughts idea extends this into using sensory triggers (anecdotes, specific feelings, emojis) to make habit reminders more emotionally impactful rather than just text notifications.

also connects to "something to get people to sleep more" as a specific instantiation. Pause (the app that was actually built) addresses a subset of this — screen breaks and reminders.

spreadsheet evaluation: the spreadsheet breaks this into three related entries. "Universal Habits Adaptive Reminders" (the IFTTT+LLM version) scored originality 8/10, excitement 8/10, MVP 4-8 weeks — the "most ambitious and interesting version" needing access to many data sources (location, weather, calendar, smart home). "Visible Habits System" (the James Clear version) scored originality 5/10, excitement 8/10, MVP 2-4 weeks — acknowledged as heavily overlapping, with the novel angle being contextual intelligence rather than another tracker. "BCI Habits Thoughts" (the sensory memory replay version) scored originality 8/10, excitement 7/10, MVP 2-4 weeks for app / 8+ weeks for BCI variant — distinct mechanism using memory/emotion replay rather than just reminders. "Sleep Habit Reinforcer" scored originality 6/10, excitement 5/10, identified as better as a feature of the universal data capturer than standalone. tech depth 6/10 for adaptive reminders, 4/10 for visible habits; labeled [STRONG] and [WRONG FIT] respectively. blue ocean analysis: EMERGING market positioning with medium 2-month feasibility.

timeline

• [2025-12-22] detailed capture of specific habits and what is/isn't solved
• [2025-12-23] identified as big project for january/february
• [2025-12-31] reaffirmed: "habits universally is something i want to do"
• [2026-01-01] detailed adaptive reminders concept with location/time/weather triggers
• [2026-01-08] sleep-specific variant captured
• [2026-04-10] google sheets evaluation — adaptive reminders 8/10 originality, 8/10 excitement; visible habits 5/10 originality, 8/10 excitement; BCI habits 8/10 originality, 7/10 excitement; EMERGING blue ocean