The Ultimate Habit Tracker Guide: Why and How to Track Your Habits

If you want to stick to a good practice, one simple and effective thing you can do is keep track of the practice.

Here's why:

Elite players often measure, measure, and track their progress in a variety of ways. Each small scale gives the answer. It provides a signal of whether they are improving or need to change course.

Gabrielle Hamilton, a New York City chef, set a fine example. In an interview with The New York Times, he said, “The one thing I see that always distinguishes a chef from a local chef is that we taste everything, all the time, before we give it to the dish, down to the grains of salt. We slammed the glass of olive oil and made it rise to our lips like the wine we were trying to identify. We taste lamb, fish, butter, milk before using it… We chew salt to see how we like it in our teeth, on our tongues, and to know its taste, its salt. ”

For the chef, tasting the ingredients tells them whether they are progressing toward their ultimate goal. It gives the quick answer they need to get the recipe right.

As a chef who improves a recipe by trying and making mistakes, we often improve our habits by trying and making mistakes. If one method does not produce the desired result, we fix it — like a cook who removes the amount of an ingredient.

However, there is an important difference between getting an answer while cooking a meal and getting an answer while you are developing a habit. When it comes to building a habit, the answer is often delayed. It is easy to taste the ingredient or watch the bread rise in the oven. But it can be difficult to visualize your progress and your habits. Maybe you've been running for a month, but you still haven't noticed a change in your body. Or you may have been able to meditate for 16 specific days, but you still feel stressed and anxious at work.

The construction of habits is a long race. It usually takes time for the results you want to appear. And while you wait for the long-term rewards of your accumulation efforts, you need a reason to stick to it in the short term. You need a quick response that shows you are on the right track.

And that's where the practice trace can help.

Habit Tracker: What it is and how it works

A custom tracker is an easy way to measure whether you have made a habit.

The most basic format is to find a calendar and cut each day sticking to your routine. For example, if you meditate on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, each of those dates gets an X. Over time, the calendar becomes a record of your practice.

To make this process as easy as possible, I created the Habit Journal, which includes 12-track track templates each month. All you have to do is add your habit and start skipping days.

Putting an X on each day is a normal look. I choose something that focuses on a little bit of make-up, so I put a cell in the cells in my custom tracker. You can also use checkmarks or complete your dot tracking practice.

No matter what design you choose, the main point your fitness fan gives is instant proof that you have completed your practice. It is a signal that you are making progress. Well, that's not all you do…

Habit is powerful for three reasons.

It creates a vision that can remind you to do it.

It's good to see the progress you are making. You don't want to break your line.

It feels like recording your success right now.

Let's separate each one.

Benefit # 1: Following a habit reminds you to do something.

Following a habit naturally creates a series of visual symptoms. If you look at the calendar and see your line, you will be reminded to do something again.

Studies have shown that people who track their progress on goals such as weight loss, smoking cessation, and blood pressure are all more likely to develop than those who do not. One study of more than sixteen hundred people found that those who kept a daily diet log lost twice as much weight as those who did not. A practice tracker is an easy way to get into your behavior, and the mere act of following a moral path can create a desire to change you.

Following the trend also keeps you faithful. Most of us think that we do better than we do. Measurement provides one way to overcome our ambiguity in our behavior and realize what is really happening each day. When the evidence is in front of you, you are less likely to lie.

Benefit # 2: Following a habit encourages you to keep going.

The most effective way to promote progress. The more we see signs of progress, the more we are encouraged to keep going. In this way, following a practice can result in addiction to motivation. Each win feeds your desire.

This can be especially powerful on a bad day. When you feel down, it's easy to forget all the progress you've made. Tracking habits provide tangible evidence of your hard work - a subtle reminder of how far you have come. Also, an empty square you see every morning can motivate you to get started because you do not want to lose your progress by breaking your line.

Benefit # 3: The familiar tracker provides instant satisfaction.

Finally, tracking feels rewarding. It's great to skip something to your to-do list, complete entries in your exercise log, or mark X on the calendar. Sounds good to watch your results grow and if they feel good, then you may be patient.

Following a habit also helps keep your eye on the ball: focusing on the process rather than the result. You’re not ready to get six pack abs, you’re just trying to keep the streak alive and be the kind of person you don’t miss using.

Ideas for Following Practice

Okay, those benefits sound great, but you don’t have to fill your tracking down with all the habits that make up your day. In fact, if you're already hooked on a habit, it seems like a lot of work for me to do it. So what should you measure in your practice