“If you onboard people to committing to something where they don't need to remember later to do it — an automatic action — what happens is you onboard, you exit out of the app, and then the next day you don't need to remember. It'll just start to block the app and you'll remember: oh, I committed to this, now I'm in.”

Auto-Scheduling a Session in Onboarding Eliminates the Remember-to-Use-It Failure Mode

Opal's biggest onboarding win was creating an automatic Mon-Fri 9-5 blocking session for the apps the user named as distractions. The user doesn't have to return to activate it — it just fires the next morning. This sidesteps the most common reason productivity apps churn in week one: the user forgets to engage. Default-on beats opt-in when the product goal is behavior change.