A habit tracker is an easy way to motivate yourself. These 50 habit tracker ideas are perfect for your planner or journal.
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How often do you try to start a new good habit or quit a bad habit, but you can’t make it longer than a week? For me, that number is too many to count!
While it can be frustrating to feel like you keep failing over and over, there’s probably something that you forgot. When you keep a record and track a new habit every day, seeing that progress motivates you to keep going.
The second part of that is to keep the record where you can see it all the time – in your planner, on a bulletin board, stuck to the front of the fridge, etc.
Habit tracker tips
There are two ways to use a habit tracker:
- Choose a specific task that you can mark yes or no and color in a box each day that you accomplish the goal. For example, if you’re trying to do yoga daily, you’ll color or put an X in a box each day that you do yoga. Or if you’re trying to quit getting coffee at Starbucks every morning, you’ll mark a box every day that you skip Starbucks.
- Choose an item to track within a range and create a color key for the options. For example, if you’re tracking the weather you might color in yellow for sunny, gray for cloudy, and purple for rainy. Or if you’re tracking jogging distance, you could color in red for 1K, orange for 2K, yellow for 3K, etc.
Pick a time each day – morning or evening – to check in with yourself and color in the square for that day. Ironically, using a habit tracker is something that you have to practice to get in the habit of doing.
If you’re new to tracking, it’s best to start with just one or two things so that you get used to doing them and documenting it. You could even start with something you already do daily so that you’re not working on a new habit and a new planner routine at the same time.
Remember that even if you skip one day or a few, you can pick up and start again. There are no rules, so make the tracker work for you.
What to put in a habit tracker
health and fitness
- water consumption
- daily vitamins
- prescriptions/medication
- blood sugar/blood pressure/migraines – any health condition!
- exercise
- daily step count
- period cycle
- no sugar/carbs/etc.
- bed on time
- wake up on time
hobbies and skills
- writing
- drawing
- instrument practice
- studying
- watering houseplants
- watering garden plants
- social media posting
- try something new
- sports practice/game
- random act of kindness
self-care and social
- meditation
- prayers
- journaling
- reading
- bath/shower
- facial mask
- date night
- calling family/friends
- screen-free
- getting a haircut
money
- paying bills
- balancing your checkbook
- checking online accounts
- saving money
- no-spend day
- sales in your online shop
- online buy/sell/trade sales
- breakfast/coffee at home
- lunch at home/packed
- dinner at home
home
- laundry
- housecleaning
- making the bed
- changing the sheets
- changing the AC filter
- walking the dog
- pet meds/grooming/etc.
- finished to-do list
- using planner
- kids habits
Printable Habit Tracker
I designed a printable habit tracker that you can use in your journal or planner to keep up with these habit tracker ideas. There’s a daily version and a monthly version.
Check out some other fun and creative ideas on One Mama’s Daily Drama:
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