A Realistic Look at Daily Habit Tracking
Benefits and insights from daily habit tracking with an easy to use template
At the end of 2019, I was reflecting on what I had attempted to accomplish in the prior year. Typically, I set a number of habits or tasks in three different areas: fitness, creativity, and mindfulness.
I try to build habits that contribute to my goals focused on improving my overall health, happiness and fulfilment. The goals constantly change, for example, my creative goals are generally about consistent writing habits, but the type of writing or projects vary.
During this particular review I wanted to measure how my fitness goal of attending the gym three times a week compared to the actual attendance. Surprisingly, I had only gone to the gym 50 times for the year, less than once a week. It was a surprise because I felt like I regularly achieved the goal. I almost couldn’t believe it. Like any problem in life, I knew this could be solved with a simple and elegant spreadsheet.
Implementing the daily habit tracker
Despite my enthusiasm for spreadsheets and organisation, I’m not solely motivated by increased productivity. The purpose of the habit tracker is to serve as an automated accountability partner, visually documenting your task completion. This eliminates the mental load of remembering and assessing your daily activities, offering clear evidence of your consistency and progress.
What you decide to complete will constantly change. Years ago, one of my goals was to start walking for 10 minutes once a day. The intention of the walk was to slow down and clear my head. The aim for most of the habit tracker’s daily tasks is to build habits that eventually remove themselves from the tracker itself because they become so ingrained in your daily routine. It becomes a habit when it’s as predictable and regular as your morning cup of coffee.
The components of the habit tracker
Daily checklist
An quick and easy interface on your mobile or PC to simply tick the task you complete in a given day. Ideally you check in in the morning and at night for a quick plan and review of each day.
Summary page
A summary of all of your daily habits in one place. You can quickly see how each habit is tracking and compare how your total habit effort has gone from month to month.
Monthly planning
Allocating time to review the prior month completed, and forecast the upcoming month is the most reliable way to accurately set reasonable goals and understand your progress. Measurement isn’t just checking the boxes, it’s examining the surrounding reasons of why you did or didn’t achieve your goals, and understanding what needs to be done to consistently complete the tasks. Adequately planning the time and resources required to achieve them is crucial. Including formally scheduling the tasks in your day if you use a calendar.
For example, if you want to schedule 30 minutes of daily writing, you may have attempted to write after dinner. However, when your day ends up being more intense than you expected, it can be hard to find the willpower to complete a task over something relaxing. The monthly review might trigger a change to get up earlier and start writing in the morning. Rather than just deciding to write in the morning, spend a few minutes optimising your circumstances the night before. Have your laptop or notebook ready to go with the writing document open. Have water and coffee/tea available to be quickly made. Reducing the friction between yourself and completing the task gives yourself the best chance to complete it.
Yearly archiving
Once you’ve committed to tracking your habits over multiple years, you’ll have some interesting, and hopefully useful insights about how seasonality and other external factors can affect your ability to complete your daily habits.
What’s the point?
To some people, this might sound like the definition of hell. Constantly observing all of your failures on a day to day basis. But the observation and measurement is precisely the point. It’s not about highlighting where you struggle. It’s about objectively examining why you can or cannot achieve what you want to achieve, and making small improvements and iterations to your schedule.
Should you aim to complete every goal daily?
It depends on the goal and the type of habits you’re trying to build. However, it’s worth remember that doing something daily is 365 times a year, whereas weekly is 52 and monthly is 12. That’s obvious isn’t it? But even if you were to fail to hit your daily habit half the time, you are still doing 250% more than perfectly succeeding with a weekly goal. The chance of a daily habit sticking is a lot higher than weekly or monthly.
Daily vs monthly is a 2942% increase in volume.
Daily vs weekly is a 602% increase volume.
It’s not (just) about productivity
The primary goal of the habit tracker is to remove the unnecessary time I spend deliberating, debating, or otherwise unsure where I am in relation to the things I want to improve at. We all have the same amount of time, the habit tracker doesn’t make you prioritise tasks over everything in your life, but enables adjustments and tweaks to hit the daily goals and build them into stronger habits.
My life has drastically changed since the inception of the habit tracker, I have two kids and additional commitments. The habit tracker has enabled me to iterate and adjust my life as things have changed. I’ve had to adjust my schedule to consistently complete the daily tasks. My daily habits around exercise, mindfulness and even creative work make me a better husband and Dad, and make me feel more fulfilled rather than productive. I’m not looking to prioritise anything over my family, I’m trying to find the balance that enables me to be the best version of myself.
Getting started
Start tracking 1-2 daily habits. At the end of the month look back at how you did, write down what surprised you, and make changes to the goal or the scheduling of the habit and subsequently track the changes. Don’t overcomplicate it, just start.
It’s always a work in progress
A couple of my personal operating principles are to try to see the world as objectively as possible, and do what I say I’m going to do. Ambition without accountability is like dreaming, full of ideas but lacking the structure to make them a reality. Just as dreams float freely without direction, ambitions without a framework for tracking and responsibility drift aimlessly, never materialising into tangible results. Aiming for consistency isn’t about perfection, it’s about progress. Identifying opportunities to improve over time leads to sustained results. The habit tracker doesn’t always show what you want, but what is necessary to improve and grow.
As life constantly changes, you can prepare but you can’t always plan. The habit tracker is a guide to challenge and improve yourself. Take it one day at a time.
Further Reading
Additional resources to learn more about habits:
Atomic Habits by James Clear - the bible on habit formation.
Amantha Imber has a great blog and podcast that discusses habits, as well as a new book, The Health Habit (although I haven’t read it yet)
Check out the Daily Habit Tracker Template here
Instructions:
Create a copy of the google sheet to edit and create your own habit tracker
Enter text or numbers in the yellow cells
You need to manually change the headings on the charts to match the goal name
In the ‘Habit % Tracker’ at the bottom of the summary page, delete any of the 5 goals you aren’t using to accurately show your total percentage completion