How To Make and Use Habit Trackers
Habit trackers are a pretty common chart used in the bullet journaling community, but sometimes it can feel daunting to get started. In this post I will be sharing some tips to make and use a personalized habit tracker that accommodates to YOUR needs!
Habit Tracker Inspo
How do I Start?
My journey with habit trackers started as a weekly tracker, and that is still my favorite way to track. It makes it alot easier to edit and personalize your habits. This way, you can delete habits that you realize are too ambitous or just not worth it for you, and add new nesscessary habit on a week by week basis.
I started using habit trackers as a small way to reward myself for completing ADL’s. They really helped me to stay on top of myself and become the best version of me possible.
The most important thing to know when making USEFUL habit trackers is to only use small, easily attainable habits. If you have this huge habit tracker full of crazy habits, it feels impossible and is actually less motivating. Don’t get me wrong - it is great to have high standards for yourself! But just don’t go too crazy. A rule of thumb when coming up with habits that you want to track is to only track 1 new habit at a time. Think about it like a controlled experiment! You can’t change up too many variables at once.
Now that you have the background knowledge and advice needed, it is time to think of some habits that you want to track!
Habits to Track
Because we want to start small, make sure you are tracking the easy and necessary life goals that you live by. It might feel a little silly to track these things; but if you struggle with keeping up with any of them, they can be a very helpful addition to your habit tracker.
Here is a list of some necessities to track in your habit tracker:
Brush teeth 2+ times daily
Shower daily
Wash hair daily
Eat 3 meals
Cook dinner
Take medication
Get dressed
Do your hair
If your habit tracker isn’t full yet, the next group of habits to focus on are self-improvement goals. These shouldn’t be super challenging, and you should already be able to meet these goals before using a habit tracker. These can also include hobby-goals, to ensure that you spend some time on your hobbies each day.
Some self-improvement habits:
Paint/groom nails
Blow dry hair
Don’t blow dry hair
exercise for 20 mins
Do school work
Drink 6 cups of water
practice yoga
Lastly, we can focus on fun and challenging habits! You should only add one of these to your tracker. Depending on your lifestyle, some of the self-improvement goals might be more of a challenge habit. Because of this, the challenging habits might seem very similar to the self improvement habits… the only difference is how you interpret the habits. For example: it is easy for my to get 20 minutes of exercise in daily and I already have that incorporated into my life, but for someone who works all day and raises a family that might be more challenging. These habits can also be hobbies that you would like to learn but haven’t yet incorporated into your life.
Here are some examples of challenges to spice up your habit tracker:
No nicotine/non-essential drug use
Drink enough water
Get some exercise in
Learn yoga
Practice sign language
Read 20 pages
Construction Time!
The last step before actually using your habit tracker, is to make it! They are pretty easy to make. You can make iiy as simple or as extra as you want… whatever makes you happy.
First, you have to decide the duration of your tracker. As I said before, I prefer the week-long ones, but you can make it month long or even longer! I recommend only going up to a month.
With the mini week long ones, they can be a nice little addition to your bujo cover spread or weekly spreads since they don’t take up much space. I really love how small and easy to use the week long ones are!
If you make a month-long habit tracker, it will most likely take up a whole page. For me, I feel less motivated to keep up with the month-long ones. But whatever floats your boat! For the month long ones, I find it much easier to make a square grid for each day instead of individual circles
And there you have it! Your very own habit tracker. You are one step closer to living a more fun and rewarding life because of it. I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!
Talk soon,
