How To Build Habits That Last With iPadOS
Over the past week, I’ve been using Pixelist, a visual habit-tracking app. Using insights from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, I’ve tried to improve my life by building new habits.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far.
The Pixelist App
The Pixelist app is incredibly simple. Here are the different features of the app:
Habit Tracking
The main feature of the app is the simple habit tracking system. To add a habit, simple tap the “Add habit button.” This opens up an input window where you can create a new habit to track.
To edit or delete a habit, simply swipe to open up these options.
Colors
One of the customization features of the Pixelist app is the ability to use different color themes. To do so, all you need to do is tap on “Theme.”
In addition, you can also change the color of the habit pixels (just tap on the pixels for the different colors). While I personally didn’t use this feature, the Pixelist app says that the different colors could represent different days of significance. Maybe one color could mean a day of significant accomplishment while another could mean a day where you overcame a major setback.
Visualizations
Another interesting feature of the Pixelist app is the ability to see different visualizations of your work.
For instance, tapping on a habit shows the different color pixels over the past month. For me, this shows how consistent I was with different habits.
Atomic Habits
Personally, Atomic Habits is one of my favorite books that I’ve ever read. While I initially gave it 4 out of 5 stars, I’ve realized over the past few months that the insights I gained from the book were insanely valuable.
Note: If you’re interested in the book, you can check out my notes on the book here.
Here are a couple quotes which stood out to me in the book:
“The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements. It’s remarkable what you can build if you just don’t stop.” “Small habits don’t add up. They compound.”
As you can see with these quotes, James Clear emphasizes the importance of small, 2-minute habits. Over time, these habits build up into something incredible.
And this is the perfect use case for the Pixelist app. Instead of tracking habits that end up taking me a long time, I track mini-habits. For instance, I track “Write 1 Word” and “Write 1 Line of Code” as some of my habits on Pixelist.
Along with being an easy way to track mini-habits, Pixelist also adds a way for users to directly see a result of their work. While I likely won’t see the immediate benefits if I just work on writing daily, I will see a small result (a colored pixel) in Pixelist. And that’s one of my favorite features of the app.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I think Pixelist is a fantastic app for people looking to build new habits. I just started using the app recently, but it’s already made me more consistent at the habits I’ve chosen to track on the app.
