[Orgmode] Populating tables

[Gary .]

I stumbled across
http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/tracking-habits.php today about
using Org-mode to help in forming (hopefully good!) habits by, for
example, scheduling repeating "tasks" and marking them as DONE when
you do them. About half way through, at
http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/tracking-habits.php#sec-4, the
author says "press tab to create a nice table that you can fill in".
And that made me wonder... "why do I have to fill it in? Can't emacs
do it for me when I indicate I've done a 'task'?" I confess, I don't
know the answer, which is why I'm asking here :-P