Habit tracker for Google Sheets [free template for 2023] — is this the best habit tracker app?
Read a story about my habit tracking journey and learn how I created a simple habit tracking app for Google Sheets. And yes, at the end of the article is a link for this habit tracker template for Google Sheets you can download and use totally for free!
Table of contents
- A short personal backstory
- The benefits of habit tracking
- Key traits of the best habit tracking apps
- What are good habits to track?
- A habit tracker based on Don’t Break the Chain Method
- How does my Habit Tracker for Google Sheets work?
- Why I think I made the best free habit tracker?
- Download Google Sheets template for 2023 (free)
- Frequently asked questions
A short personal backstory why I started tracking my habits
As a designer, I spend most of my days sitting at a computer, and it’s starting to take a toll on my health. I’ve noticed that I don’t have much energy, I’ve gained weight, and I’ve even developed some health issues like a back pain.
I’ve realised that I need to make some changes and improve my lifestyle.
I’ve decided to start by adopting a few new routines. I’ve started exercising regularly, eating healthier, and getting enough sleep. I’ve also made an effort to be more active during the day, like taking walks and standing up from my desk more often. I want to make sure I’m doing the right things to improve my health and wellbeing.
To help me stay on track, I’ve decided to create a simple web application based on Google Sheets for tracking my habits.
It’s a really basic app, but it’s just what I need: I can use it to keep track of my exercise, my meals, my sleep, and any other habits I want to focus on.
I’m excited to see how this app will help me improve my life and reach my goals. I know it won’t be easy, but I’m determined to make these changes and live a healthier, happier life.
You should track your habits if…
I think it's evident from my story why I needed introduce a habit tracking to my life. But there's more benefits of tracking your habits and having a consistent daily routine:
- Improved self-awareness and self-control: Daily tracking of good habits can help you become more aware of your thoughts, feelings, and actions. This increased self-awareness can then help you make better decisions and have more control over your behaviour. For example, if you track your daily exercise routine, you may become more aware of how your mood and energy levels change throughout the day. This can help you make better choices about when to exercise and how much to do.
- Increased productivity and achievement of goals: By tracking your good habits, you can monitor your progress and identify any areas where you may be falling short. This can help you make adjustments and stay on track to achieve your goals. For example, if you are tracking your daily reading habit, you may notice that you are not making as much progress as you had hoped. This can motivate you to read more consistently or to set more realistic goals.
- Improved physical and mental health: Good habits, such as exercising regularly, eating a healthy diet, and getting enough sleep, can have a positive impact on both your physical and mental health. By tracking these habits, you can ensure that you are taking care of your body and mind. This can help reduce your risk of chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, and can also improve your mood, memory, and cognitive function.
- Enhanced self-esteem and self-confidence: As you track your good habits and see yourself making progress, you may develop a greater sense of pride and accomplishment. This can boost your self-esteem and self-confidence, and can make you feel more capable and in control of your life. For example, if you are tracking your daily meditation practice, you may find that you are able to focus and calm your mind more easily over time. This can improve your sense of self-worth and make you feel more confident in your abilities.
What you should look for when it comes to habit tracking apps?
There's many habit tracking apps out there, some of them paid, some of them free.
To name a few: HabitBull, Loop, Atomic Habits, Daily Habits, Good Habits, Done,… You could easily spent several days evaluating all the best habit tracking apps available on the market.
If you know what you’re looking for, the process will be much simpler and more straightforward — what you should look for when you’re thinking about getting a habit tracking app?
Key traits of the best habit tracking apps
The best habit tracking apps for web, iOS or Android share a few key traits that make them effective at helping users monitor and improve their habits. Some of these traits include:
- User-friendly design: The best habit tracking apps are easy to use and navigate, with a clean and intuitive user interface that makes it simple to track habits and view progress.
- Customization options: The best habit tracking apps allow users to customize their experience, including the ability to track multiple habits simultaneously and set specific goals for each habit.
- Reminders and notifications: The best habit tracking apps provide helpful reminders and notifications to help users stay on track with their habits and avoid missing tracking sessions.
- Progress tracking and analysis: The best habit tracking apps provide detailed tracking and analysis of users’ progress over time, allowing them to see how their habits are evolving and identify areas for improvement.
- Integration with other apps and devices: The best habit tracking apps can integrate with other health and wellness apps and devices, providing a more comprehensive view of users’ overall health and well-being.
What are good daily habits to track?
They key for your change is simple: it’s important to choose the right habits to track, as not all habits are equally beneficial.
But what are some good habits to track on a daily basis?
Good habits to track are those that align with your goals and values, and that have a positive impact on your overall health and well-being. By focusing on these habits, you can increase your chances of success and make lasting improvements to your life.
5 best daily habits to track
- Exercise: tracking regular exercise can help you maintain a healthy lifestyle and improve your overall fitness.
- Eating healthy: tracking your food intake can help you make better choices and ensure you’re getting the nutrients your body needs.
- Getting enough sleep: getting enough sleep is important for your physical and mental health. Tracking your sleep can help you ensure you’re getting the recommended 7–9 hours of sleep per night.
- Drinking water: staying hydrated is important for your overall health and well-being. Tracking your water intake can help you make sure you’re getting enough fluids each day.
- Meditating: meditation has numerous benefits for your mental health, including reducing stress and improving focus and concentration. Tracking your meditation practice can help you stay consistent and reap the benefits of this healthy habit.
Meet a habit tracker based on Don’t Break the Chain Method
Do you know Don’t Break the Chain or The Seinfeld Method? It is a productivity technique that involves setting a goal for oneself, and then marking an X on a calendar for each day that the goal is accomplished. Over time, a chain of X’s forms on the calendar, providing a visual representation of the progress being made.
The idea behind the technique is to motivate the you to not break the chain of X’s by missing a day, which can be a powerful incentive to stay on track and continue working towards their goal.
The technique is said to have been inspired by comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who used a similar method to help him maintain his daily writing routine.
When I was thinking about how to make a habit tracker, a memory of this useful visualisation came to my mind.
And that's why I wanted to introduce a habit tracker for Google Sheets that visually resembles look of a traditional calendar.
How to make a habit tracker in Google Sheets in 2023?
You can download the final habit tracker template, or — if you want — you can try to build it on your own in Google Sheets. The general process of creating tracker for year 2023 is following:
1. Open Google Sheets and create a new spreadsheet.
2. In the first row, enter the name of the habit you want to track. For example, you might have a row labeled “Exercise,” “Meditation,” and “Drink Water.” I like to have things simple and focused and that's why I always follow a simple rule: 1 habit = 1 sheet.
3. In the second row, enter the days of the week or the dates that you want to track. For example, you might have cells labeled “Monday,” “Tuesday,” and so on.
4. Now for each cell under the week name you need to enter a tick box. Go to menu Insert > Tick box. This will insert a checkbox you can easily click.
Hint: You can insert the first tick box this way, then select the cell with it, hover it over its bottom right corner, click, hold and drag it down the whole area to duplicate it easily 👇
5. Then you can continue to improve it by adding more details or customising the style, font, size of the cells etc. for your habit tracker template. It's really up to you.
I spent literally several hours in Google Sheets on my habit tracker until I reached the state I really liked. The most of the time took me all the formulas as I wanted to have my tracker interactive and good-looking. It was a lot of googling and trial and error 🙂 (If you want to add interactive progress bars like I have, learn more about sparklines in Google Sheets, or just simply grab the template below and study all formulas I used…).
How does my Habit Tracker for Google Sheets work?
My Habit Tracker, a Google Sheets template you can get for free, works simply. It's like a calendar you have on the wall or your desk.
It is organised by month, from January to December. For each month you have a complete list of all days available that month.
I created two options because in some countries the week starts on Sunday and in others on Monday. You can choose the one that suits you better.
Start with putting the goal you would like to track to the top: what's the new habit you want to adopt or keep?
Then all you need to do is to tick a checkbox every day marking you have completed that habit on that specific day.
So yes, my habit tracker app really works like a simple checklist.
Each day, you would check the boxes next to the habits that you performed that day. For example, if you want to track running, you would check the box next on “🏃♂️Running” sheet on the days that you went for a run.
But wait, there's more…
After I created a habit tracker for the whole year 2023, I went little crazy and spent a WAY MORE time on improving the tracker than I initially expected.
I know how hard it is to start a new habit.
And every self-help book will recommend you to start small. Start with only one thing, with one habit that you will implement into your life.
But what if you're so good with your first habit that you want to introduce another one? And the same after the second, third and so on… you know it.
I realised it would be massively helpful to have an overview for all the habits you track. And that's when a dashboard was born.
On the dashboard you can see the progress for all your habits throughout the year at a glance.
It enables you to see everything from a 'bird’s perspective'.
This is a must for anyone who needs to keep track of more than one daily habit at the time.
As I consider myself as a night person, I also decided to create a special set of habit tracker templates for Google Sheets in a dark mode 😎 Again, it took me additional hour or two but it was worth it. Check this out 👇
And when I was working on this template, my wife saw it and told me she would like to have something more feminine. So I create one more template for her👇
As I consider these more as something extra, I decided not to include this to the core part of the free template. It's a paid add-on you can purchase if you want more from your habit tracker.
But if you're serious about your habit tracking, it's a no-brainer.
The most of the habit tracking apps usually require monthly subscription averaging ~$5 / month. This makes it at least $60 / year you need to put from your pocket.
I hate subscriptions. When I have one, I quickly forget about it and there have been a few times when I’ve paid for an app I stopped using (as I haven't realised I have to cancel it 🤷♂️).
So this extra upgrade is one time payment. Pay once, use it as long as you want. I did some math and came up with the price $8,99 (which is like 3 or 4 coffees in your favourite coffeeshop and more than 6 times less than you'd pay for an app with subscription from an example above).
Download Habit Tracker for Google Sheets
As mentioned above, there are two options for this template: a free Habit Tracker or a premium template set. Pick the one which suits you more.
Is it the best free habit tracker?
Yes, I believe so because I made it! 😁 Now seriously — here's the list of all the benefits why I think my Habit tracker for Google Sheets [free template] is the best free habit tracker out there:
- It’s free: Many habit tracking apps are paid, available at a cost, some of them even make you pay on a monthly basis. This makes them not accessible to anyone who wants to improve their habits. I think habit tracking shouldn't be a privilege of those who have money.
- It provides motivation: There’s a little progress bar with an emoji tied to it for each month and seeing your progress in a habit tracker can be a great source of motivation, as it can help you stay focused and on track.
- It brings you clarity: As you have one habit per one page, you can see at a glance how are you doing throughout the year. You can easily tell and see which months were the best (or worst) for building and keeping your routine.
- It enables you to track habits online: You can access the app from anywhere because it’s on the web, it’s online. This allows you to use any device that has internet access and where you have a Google Sheets account.
- It’s built with privacy in mind: All data in the habit tracker is private by default as they live within your Google Sheets account. They are yours. The data is not shared with anyone and no one can see it. Log and track whatever you want.
- It’s dead-simple to use: Have you ever touched a computer or phone? (I assume you have if you're reading this…). Adopting and using this habit tracking app is really simple: you just need to tick a checkbox, if you completed the habit on that day. And that's it! You can start using it even if you have no prior experience with Google Sheets. (But you need to have a Google account).
Free download: Habit Tracker for Google Sheets
This Habit Tracker for Google Sheets is up-to-date. It is made for year 2023.
Every template comes by default with 2 options:
- A monthly tracker with weeks starting with Sunday
- A monthly tracker with weeks starting with Monday
Pick the one according to your customs & delete the second one.
You can download Google Sheets template for free by following this link.
Frequently asked questions
Is this habit tracker template editable?
Yes, as you can download my Google Sheets template for free and add it to your own account, it is fully editable and you can do any change you want. You even see all my formulas (🕵️) and maybe they'll inspire you to customise it more for your needs! I'm totally fine with it.
Can I use this habit tracker template for Excel?
I haven't tried it on my own but I believe if you need to have a habit tracker template for Microsoft Excel, you can easily export my template as XLS and then import it to it. Not sure if everything will stay the same but you can try it and let me know into the comments!
And what about using this habit tracker template for Word?
If you have Microsoft Word and you're looking for a free habit tracker template, you can use mine too! Go to File > Download > Open Document (.ods)
Can you print this habit tracker?
Yes, absolutely. If you need to download a free printable habit tracker template, you can easily go to File > Print in Google Sheets and each month will fit one A4 page.
And obviously I recommend not to tick any checkboxes before the download ;-)
Can I use this habit tracker with friends?
Totally! Social habit tracking is a great way to hold yourself accountable for your habits, to get motivation from others and stay on track. As long as the template lives on Google Sheets, it can be easily shared with others.
Tracking your habits with friends is not something you could use 'out of the box' at the moment, but you can relatively simply customise the original template to add tracking for more than 1 person to the same sheet. See an example below.
(Let me know to the comments if this social habit tracking template would be useful for you and I can look at it and introduce it for Google Sheets too…)
