The Best Tools for Habit Tracking

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The Best Tools for Habit Tracking

July 7, 2020 - Posted by Connie to Guides, Office, Planners

Habit tracking is an amazing way to hold yourself accountable to your resolutions. Whether it’s starting a healthy routine or just being more mindful of how you spend your time, you can easily set up habit trackers to help manage your goals. In this guide, we’ll share some of our favorite habit tracking tips and tricks, as well as tools to make your own habit trackers.

Table of Contents

Why Use Habit Trackers?

Monitor short- and long-term goals by habit tracking.

Habit tracking is a method for monitoring short- and long-term goals. It can give you a sense of accomplishment to see progress over a period of time—especially if a project takes weeks or months. Habit tracking also provides a space to log daily or weekly tasks, making it easier to remember specific things to complete on a regular basis. Even if you don’t manage to complete your goal, you can learn from the experience.

Habit trackers are a helpful way to discover room for improvement (for example, by managing a schedule so there’s more time to dedicate to a habit), or recognize where your intentions were too ambitious. Review your goals and adjust them so they become more achievable, or remove a goal entirely if it no longer suits your needs.

What Can I Track?

Habit tracking is completely flexible: create as many or as few habit trackers as you would like. Here are some of our ideas:

1. Things you want to do more

Building good habits starts with consistency. Keep track of all the times you drank water or got enough sleep and you will see that it’s easier than you think to start a habit. A habit tracker also serves as a reminder for tasks, like taking vitamins.

2. Actions you want to limit

You can also record the times you limit yourself. Negative habits are formed over time, so you should give yourself space to create new, positive habits. By keeping track of the days where you actively strive to form positive routines—like not using your phone before you sleep or cooking instead of eating out—you can remind yourself that it’s healthy to be a work in progress.

3. Self-care

It’s important to take personal time, and habit tracking is a great way to make sure it happens. Mark down spa days or special treats like a night out at a restaurant. If you haven’t allotted time for yourself in a while, schedule it in your planner so you won’t forget.

4. New skills

When learning a new skill, it can be encouraging to visualize progress over time. Add a note when you’ve learned a special technique or made it past a difficult level.

How to Use a Weekly Habit Tracker

A week is a relatively short period of time, so it’s a good span to judge whether or not to continue tracking a habit. If something isn’t working out, there’s no need to commit for a whole month. Additionally, using a weekly tracker turns a long-term goal into smaller, manageable steps.

Kokuyo Campus Study Planner Loose Leaf Paper - Weekly Visualized

Create an in-depth plan to turn tasks into habits. The Kokuyo Campus Weekly Visualized Study Planner has plenty of space to write down tasks to spend time on. Assign a color to specific tasks and add detailed tracking in the hourly blocks.

Nombre Mizushima Stamp Task - Week

Use this Nombre Mizushima Stamp to set incremental goals. Add the weekly habit tracking stamp to the daily or weekly pages of a planner. As time passes, update the “Task” line. For example, increase the number of miles run or time spent exercising.

How to Use a Monthly Habit Tracker

Use a monthly habit tracker to turn short-term goals into sustainable habits. Monthly habit trackers are especially useful for binary goals that are either complete or incomplete.

Midori Habit Tracker Diary

This cute Midori Habit Tracker Diary organizes all of your progress into one notebook. Each page has two trackers with space for a title, goal, and any extra notes. You can dedicate one page per month, or use the entire spread to track your habits. A section in the back of the diary features samples of illustrations and titles that you can copy to decorate the pages.

Midori Journal Sticky Notes - Habit Tracker

If you don't need an extra notebook, these sticky notes are a handy way to keep your trackers in the planner you're already using! The repositionable adhesive is especially useful on daily and weekly planners, so you don’t have to keep flipping back to a page: just move the sticky note to a new spread.

If you prefer an option with days of the week, the Suatelier Planner Month Sticky Notes are Sunday-start calendars with space for dates.

Habit Tracking Tips

1. Break down goals into steps.

BGM Washi Tape - Special - Errand

If you feel overwhelmed by what you want to accomplish, break down large goals into achievable steps. Use BGM Special Errand Washi Tape to turn a year-long project into a manageable checklist of tasks.

2. Make your tracking distinguishable.

Kuretake Zig Clean Color Dot Double-Sided Markers

Use unique symbols or a variety of colors to mark habit trackers. Be sure to create a key that describes what each symbol and color means. Kuretake Zig Clean Color Dot Double-Sided Markers come in a variety of colors and have a squishy round tip on one side that makes larger dots with more pressure. Fill in a habit tracker with small and large dots to show how well you achieved your goals.

3. Keep your habit tracking at your fingertips.

Midori Clip Bookmarker

Make sure to fill out habit trackers on a regular basis. Not only does this hold you accountable, you can also see accomplishments over a period of time. Midori Clip Bookmarkers make it easy to turn to the right page in a planner or notebook. Use them as stencils to add fun designs to trackers too!

4. Create neat and stress-free trackers.

Midori Multi Ruler & Zebra Sarasa Mark On Gel Pen

A messy and smear-filled habit tracker page will only cause frustration and stress. A straightedge like the Midori Multi Ruler can be used to draw tidy charts, then folded and stored with a notebook. If you like color-coding, use pens that resist smudging under highlighters and markers. Zebra Sarasa Mark On Gel Pens have a special ink formulation that cuts down on smudging.

Other Resources

Conclusion

Achieve your goals with ease by using habit trackers. Shop all of our recommendations below and be sure to let us know what you use habit tracking for in the comments.

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