I Used This Habit Tracker and Hit 84% Of My Habits In Month 1

This is how I created new habits that actually stick. Now you can do the same…

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ILLUMINATION

5 min readAug 3, 2023

I recently wrote a Medium article about my new, game-changing habit tracker. You might want to read about how that works, before reading this article about how it’s going.

What you don’t see very often with stories about habits / productivity is evidence. When I’m looking for new tips and methods, I want to see them in action.

For that reason, I’m sharing my progress with the world.

This article shows the first month of my new habit tracking, so that you can decide whether this method will work for you.

Week One

I’ll start by giving some pointers, as not all of the activities are self explanatory.

DuoLingo — language learning app, as I’m learning Spanish. I have a 58 day streak which I don’t want to lose, so I do this literally every day. Check out this article about how I’m shortcutting learning a language.
Gym — self explanatory. FYI, before this I was not in any gym routine at all.
5k run. Self explanatory.
Articles — I have a few blogs and am trying to write an article a day.
Make bed. Self explanatory. 0% success rate before this.
3 meals a day. No skipping breakfast etc.
Look good, feel good. Basically just not wearing crumpled clothes, doing my hair, etc — so I feel respectable.

OK — so week one, a very good week of feeling motivated. I calculate a total percentage by (boxes ticked / total boxes) for the month.

I achieved 94% in week one. The only slip ups came from going out all night with my cousins on Saturday and being very hungover on Sunday.

Week Two

Typically I find that I get really motivated to do stuff but then quite quickly lose momentum. You can see where this happened in week two.

For starters, Monday sucked — I was knackered from the weekend and did basically nothing. This ruined my weekly percentage.

Here’s a great tip for habits that I’ve written about previously: Don’t miss twice. If you have a rubbish day Monday, make sure you try and hit everything Tuesday.

Missing once is an anomaly. Missing twice is a pattern.

You can see I had a few nights out (not usually a massive party boy these days, but I only have a couple of months when I can see family).

This meant I missed my Sunday run — but decided I would do it the next week, in the spirit of not making excuses like a little wet wipe.

In my second week I achieved 71% overall.

Week Three

In week three, my article writing — supposedly one per day — absolutely dropped off a cliff. In fact this is the first article I’ve written since, and we’re almost two weeks later.

A couple of self-reflective notes on that:

I didn’t build this into a proper habit. Unlike gym, which has a routine (pack clothes, leave for gym at 11:30 so it isn’t busy, do these specific exercises), the article writing was just ‘as and when’.
I don’t feel bad about getting 20% on article writing. I could just delete it from the tracker and get a really great overall percentage — but that’s cheating really. Rarely do people start a new habit and do it every day without slipping up. Having it in there is a good reminder that I committed to something, and I should pick it up.

Overall, week three was an 87% success.

Week Four

Week four and I still haven’t picked up on the article writing. But don’t worry guys — it’s week five and I’m back 😉

OK so 85% in week four, materially the same as week three but without the extra run at the beginning of the week.

I’ll write some closing thoughts again here, which might be of some value. I hope this habit tracker works for you, as it really does for me! Again, read more about how it works in my initial article.

The Most Successful Habits

The habits I did most successfully were either:

At a set time, such as going to the gym at 11:30 before it gets busy.
As part of a routine, such as making my bed before I walk out the door for work. Not the exact time, but it’s anchored to another activity.

If you can get your habit into a routine somehow, you’re onto a winner.

Closing Thoughts

Habit forming isn’t about the goal — it’s about the system. Get a good system in place and you can improve the way you are.
Per above, failing isn’t bad — in fact, it’s expected. Remember: If you fall off the wagon, get straight back on again. Never miss twice.
I have a 58 day streak on DuoLingo, so I never miss. I considered taking this out of the tracker as it’s now a “fully formed” habit — but I like having a mix of things that are easy to hit and hard to hit. This gives a nice overall percentage.
Similarly, as mentioned, I haven’t given up on the things that I have done a terrible job of in the tracker.
Also, making your bed only takes 2 seconds but gives the same % boost as going to the gym. I like having a mix of “quick” habits and “hard” habits, because doing one encourages you to do the other (so you don’t mess up the overall %).