6 Reasons to Start Tracking Your Habits
If you are really serious about sticking to a habit or starting a new habit, keeping a habit tracker is a great way for you to stay accountable, see your progress, and keep going!
Any great performer, whether they be an athlete, business-owner, actor – or pretty much anyone who performs well, measures and tracks their progress in some way.
Tracking your performance, and therefore your habits, shows you that what you are doing works. It can show you where things didn’t work, and what you could have done better.
Forming, and sticking to, good habits takes time and effort. Results won’t just happen overnight.
But if you are tracking those habits, you will start to see progress. You will see progress from before and after, and you will have so much more desire to keep going.
What is a Habit Tracker and How Does it Work?
Put very simply – a habit tracker is a way to measure when you did a habit or task.
A Habit Tracker is a little like when you see a prisoner in movies marking off the days until his release on his wall!
Tracking your habits is a visual reminder of how long you have been doing something for, how long you have to go with something, and how much you have done something.
You can very easily just take a regular calendar and mark with an X every time you do something.
But an actual habit tracker sheet is a prettier and more in-depth way of tracking your habits.
If you are especially a very visual person, you will love a habit tracker for the results it will show you.
A Habit tracker can not only track when you did something. It can also track when you avoided doing something (a bad habit), or it can show something fun, such as the days when you traveled.
If you worked out 4 times last week, you can look at your habit tracker and feel great that you can see visually that you did that!
So moving along, here are 6 reasons why you should start tracking your habits with an actual habit tracker!
Reason #1: A Habit Tracker Reminds you to Act & Actually Do Something
If you can actually see visually that you did something, and how much you did something, you are far more likely to keep doing it.
There is so much research that shows and proves that people who track their progress in things such as losing weight, stopping smoking, and even eating better, do so much better when they actually track their progress.
Reason #2: Habit Tracking Keeps you Honest with Yourself
We all tend to think that we do better than we actually do with tasks and habits.
We may think, oh I worked out several times last week, I’m doing well! But actually when we take a look at the tracker we see that in fact we only worked out once and we were mistaken.
A habit tracker keeps us honest to ourselves. We can be somewhat blind to our own behavior, especially in our extremely busy lives.
Reason #3: A Habit Tracker Motivates you to Keep on and Continue
The best form of motivation is seeing progress. If you can see that you are in fact doing well in sticking to something, that you are moving in the right direction, and moving forward on something, you are far more likely to stay motivated.
We all have bad days. We all have days when we just don’t feel like doing something. This can be especially true of exercise.
We can come home from work, tired after a long day, and we would much rather sit in front of Netflix with a glass of wine than go to that exercise class.
But if you can see that you kept going and have been going consistently several times a week, you are more likely to find the motivation to go and keep to it.
You will also see an empty square on your habit tracker that would otherwise have been filled in! And that alone can be motivation enough!
Reason #4: A Habit Tracker Gives you Instant Satisfaction & Joy
Crossing off that square on your habit tracker can give you an instant buzz and satisfaction!
You are instantly rewarded for something, and that can feel really good. Just like getting a gold star when we are children at school!
Reason #5: A Habit Tracker Keeps you Accountable
With a habit tracker you are accountable to nobody but yourself.
If you miss a day doing your ab exercises that you are supposed to do, only you will miss out and suffer the consequences.
But you will feel it. You will feel the disappointment and the failure.
Yes you can feel that anyway if you miss and stop doing something. But seeing it visually is a harsher reminder – that missing square, that day missing from your streak.
Reason #6: A Habit Tracker will make you feel more in control of your life
Seeing your visual progress, and seeing that you are actively working on doing something, will help you feel far more in control of your life.
You will actually feel that you are doing something – not just thinking about doing something.
Habit Tracker Ideas
You may know exactly what habits you want to track. You may know that you need to lose weight – so you need to track when you exercise, and when you go without sugar for a day.
You may know that you want to quit smoking, so mark off the days when you don’t have a cigarette.
But sometimes it isn’t that clear what you actually want to track. It isn’t always clear to us that something we are doing, or not doing, is detrimental to us.
So what do you think you need a habit tracker for?
Here are some common habits to track on a daily basis:
Journaling
Reading
Meditating
Exercising
Taking medication
Talk a walk outside
Water intake
Here are some common habits to track on a weekly basis:
Watering plants
Exercise class
Task around the home
Laundry
What you track with a habit tracker can be as mundane or as exciting as you want it to be.
Get Your 12 Months of Habit Trackers
Our FREE 12 Months of Habit Trackers are a really pretty way for you to track your habits!
With these habit trackers every month you can track up to 6 different habits. Mark off the days when you do something, or don’t do something.
So start tracking your habits in a pretty and exciting way!
Get 12 Months of Habit Trackers Here for Free!
If you are really serious about sticking to a habit or starting a new habit, keeping a habit tracker is a great way for you to stay accountable, see your progress, and keep going!