Habit tracker

What It Means

A habit tracker is a record of one or more habits with a space for each day, which you mark whenever you do the habit. It can be a printed grid, a page in a journalJournalingWriting down your thoughts and feelings, in a notebook or an app, to understand them more clearly and to see what's behind your stress. See more or an app. Its job is to make progress visible, which is a form of what researchers call monitoring goal progress.

How People Say It

• "I put a check on my tracker every time I drink my water."
• "My habit tracker is a grid on the fridge."
• "Eleven boxes in a row, I'm not skipping tonight."

The Breakdown

How to set one up

1. Pick one to three habits. Fewer is easier to keep up.
2. Write each one as something you can see yourself do, such as "Walk 20 minutes" instead of "Be healthier."
3. Draw a grid with the days across and the habits down, or set it up in an app.
4. Mark the box as soon as you finish, so the record stays honest.
5. Once a week, look at the grid and ask what got in the way on the blank days.

What a week can look like (an example)

Short version to try today. Choose one habit, draw seven boxes, and mark the first one tonight if you did it.

Good to Know

Tracking has research behind it. A meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin, "Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment?", pooled 138 studies with 19,951 participants and found that prompting people to monitor their progress made them more likely to reach their goals, as the American Psychological Association reported in 2015. For how long a habit takes to feel automatic, a study by Lally and colleagues, "How are habits formed," followed 96 volunteers for 12 weeks and found a median of 66 days, with individual estimates from 18 to 254 days. A median is the middle value, so plenty of people took longer.

Related Terms and Categories

• Habit loop

  The three-part pattern behind a habit, as described by Charles Duhigg: a cue that triggers it, the routine you do, and the reward that makes it stick.

• Keystone habit

  A habit that tends to set off changes in other habits, such as regular exercise leading to better eating, as described by Charles Duhigg.

• Habit stacking

  James Clear's name for building a new habit by tying it to one you already do, using the formula "After I do my current habit, I will do my new habit."

• Time tracking

  Recording how much time goes to each task or type of work, either to see where your hours really go or to keep the hours records pay depends on.

• Bullet journal

  Ryder Carroll's notebook method for tracking tasks, events and notes with short entries and symbols, organized into an index and daily, monthly and future logs.

Productivity methods and focus