Habit Tracking: Definition, Examples, & Tips

By Kelsey Schultz, Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Habit tracking can be a powerful tool for change. Learn more about why and how to track your habits.
*This page may include affiliate links; that means we earn from qualifying purchases of products.
Habits are automatic behaviors that don’t require conscious control. In other words, habits are the things you do without even thinking about it. Checking your phone, locking your doors, or brushing your teeth before bed are all examples of common habits. Some of our habits are beneficial to our health, like having breakfast in the morning or going for an evening walk. Other habits are not so good for us, like smoking cigarettes or binge eating. 

Because habits are automatic and don’t require awareness or intention, we can often behave in ways that are not in line with our long-term goals or fail to behave in ways that will facilitate our goals. For example, I have a bad habit of hitting snooze on my alarm in the morning even though I know it’s in my best interest to get up on time. 
But, as the popular saying goes, “You don’t rise to the level of your expectations but fall to the level of your training.” By hitting snooze every day, I’ve trained myself to keep doing it despite my best intentions.

Creating positive habits and breaking bad habits can be extremely challenging and in some cases may take a long time, but is certainly worth the effort. When a behavior becomes a habit, it becomes easy to perform even when your motivation wanes. Keeping a daily record of the behaviors we want to implement or change over time can help facilitate successful, long-term changes.

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What Is Habit Tracking? (A Definition)

Habit tracking is basically just recording the behavior you’re trying to change. For example, let’s say you want to start a habit of doing breathing exercises first thing in the morning every day. Using a habit tracker, you would make a note of every time you got out of bed and did your breathing exercises. Similarly, if you wanted to stop drinking sodas, you would note every day you successfully abstained from it. Over time, you would be able to get a sense of how consistently you’re achieving your goal and what factors might be at play on days when you fail.

Why Habit Tracking Is Important

We humans don’t have a very accurate perception of our behaviors. We regularly overestimate how often we do some things while underestimating how often we do others. For example, we might feel like we drink plenty of water every day when we actually are only getting about half of what we need. Or we might feel like we are doing a good job at being frugal and saving our money without realizing how many days a week we spend money on take-out. Tracking our habits provides us with an accurate picture of our typical behaviors and provides us with a deeper understanding of ourselves (Cox et al., 2013).

Keeping an accurate record of our habits is especially important when we’re trying to achieve a goal such as improved mental or physical health, greater productivity, or mastering a new skill. By tracking the habits we are trying to implement (or break), we can get a better sense of when we are successful and the factors that might be helping or impeding our progress. This allows us to make any other changes necessary to facilitate success or perhaps even change tactics entirely. For example, let’s say we are trying to start a habit of daily journaling before bed, but we notice that we are always unsuccessful on days when we go to bed late. This might be an indication that we should try to get to bed earlier or if that isn’t an option, we might change our goal to journaling first thing in the morning instead.

Habit tracking can also help us stay motivated. When we record whether or not we performed our target behaviors, we hold ourselves accountable. It is rewarding to see long streaks of success and our desire to not break that streak can give us an extra dash of incentive when our motivation starts to wane. Similarly, seeing when we’ve had long streaks without the behavior can help us understand why we’re not making the progress we hoped to be making and can help us decide to keep at it rather than give up.

Does Habit Tracking Work?

For many people, habit tracking is highly effective. Many habit-tracking apps and journals have glowing reviews from individuals who have revolutionized their lives by tracking their habits. Personally, I’ve found tracking my habits enormously helpful. Science also supports the efficacy of habit tracking and suggests that by monitoring your behavior, you enhance your self-control capacity and thus improve your ability to change target behaviors in the desired manner (Quinn et al., 2010).

Though habit tracking can be a great way to help you change your behavior in a meaningful way, research has shown that there is a risk of becoming dependent on the tracker to sustain the behavior (Renfree et al., 2016; Stawarz et al., 2015). Typically, habits form by cue association, which means that a particular context or aspect of your environment will trigger the behavior. For example, if you usually brush your teeth and then wash your face, brushing your teeth might become the cue that signals that your next action should be washing your face. 
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So while habit trackers are a good way to be sure you consistently perform some behavior, it is possible that you could end up relying on the reminders they provide to trigger the action. You can avoid this, however, by being sure to associate your new habit with a behavior you already do regularly. For example, let’s say you want to incorporate a gratitude practice into your day. You could write in your gratitude journal every day after your morning cup of coffee. Over time, coffee in the morning will become the cue that triggers gratitude journaling.

Examples of Habit Tracking

The habits you track will depend on your goals. There are 2 basic categories of goals in this context: Self-knowledge and self-improvement.

Self-knowledge
This goal centers around understanding yourself and your behaviors better. For example, if you’re interested in learning more about what is different between good days and bad days, whether you are meeting your body’s basic needs, or if you need to develop better spending practices. For this aim, you might track things like caloric intake, mood, sleep, menstrual cycle, exercise, water intake, and time spent on your hobby.

Self-improvement
Self-improvement is likely the more common goal when it comes to habit tracking. Self-improvement includes any skills you want to learn, good habits you want to create, and bad habits you want to break. With this aim, you would of course keep track of when you practice the skill you are trying to learn, when you performed that behavior you are trying to add to your daily routine, and when you successfully abstained from the habit you are trying to break. However, it might also be helpful to keep track of other factors that may influence your success such as workload, sleep quality, stress level, and alcohol consumption.

How to Track Habits

Tracking your habits can be as simple as marking an X in your calendar every day that you successfully complete the behavior. However, there are a multitude of ways that you can track your habits if you prefer something with a little more flare. Here are a couple of videos with great suggestions for how to create or find a habit tracker that will work for you:

Video: A Better Way to Track Your Habits

Video: How to Make a Habit Tracker That You’ll Actually Use

How Many Habits Should You Track?

The number of habits you should track depends on your current lifestyle and what habits you are trying to implement. For example, if the habit you are trying to implement is going to require a radical change in your daily routine, it might be best to just start with that one and save the others for later. If you are only trying to implement small habits that won’t require drastic change, like flossing your teeth or morning affirmations, then it likely won’t be overwhelming to try adding 2 or 3 new habits. If you feel like you’ve taken on too much, just pick the habit that is most important to you and start there. You can always add more later. 

Tips on Habit Tracking

Habit tracking isn’t always as simple as it might sound. Some of us might have a hard time knowing where to start and even more of us will find it challenging to keep it up. Here are a few tips that might help you as you build your new habits:
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  • Start with small habits that you can complete in 2 minutes or less that you can stick to even on hard days. The streaks of success you’ll have in your new small habits will help give you the momentum you need to work on the bigger ones.
  • Don’t miss two days in a row. When you miss a day, give yourself a little grace and self-compassion, but get back to it asap. Every day you miss diminishes your progress a bit more.
  • If you’re working towards a goal, break it down into smaller steps. For example, if your goal is to get fit, the first step might be to do 10 minutes of yoga every day.
  • Keep your habit tracker available at all times. Using an app on your phone or computer is a good option so you never have to try to remember to record your habits later.
  • Neat, stress-free trackers that are aesthetically appealing will help you keep up with your tracking. Habit trackers that are cluttered, confusing, or disorganized can discourage you from using them.
  • Celebrate your successes. Even when your habits are small and don’t feel particularly noteworthy, it’s important to recognize your progress as it’s happening.
  • Keep a journal of how accomplishing the tasks you’ve set for yourself feels. Noting that you had more energy when you exercised in the morning or that your mood was better after you meditated is a great way to encourage yourself to keep at it when your motivation wanes.

Habit Tracking Journals

Habit tracking journals are a great option if you prefer pen and paper or if you don’t want another task that requires more screen time. Here are a few excellent examples of habit-tracking journals:

Habit Tracking Apps

Habit tracking apps are a great option because they typically come with a host of helpful features like reminders, statistics, challenges, community engagement, and motivational affirmations. Below is a list of some of the best habit-tracking apps:

Quotes on Habit Tracking

  • “A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.” – James Clear
  • “What gets measured gets managed.” – Peter Drucker​

Articles Related to Habit Tracking

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:​​​​​

Books Related to Habit Tracking​

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Habit Tracking

Habit tracking is a phenomenal way to improve your health and well-being and to gain a deeper understanding of yourself. By measuring how consistently we perform a desired action or abstain from a harmful one, we can get an accurate picture of how successful we are in establishing a habit, how our developing habit is affecting our physical and psychological health, and what factors thwart or facilitate our capacity to consistently stick to our goal. There are numerous options for tracking habits. Some are simple, like making a mark in a calendar indicating success, and some are more involved, like creating a habit tracking journal or using a habit tracking app. The best method is whatever method works best for you. Remember, a behavior only becomes a habit after plenty of repetition so it’s important to stick with it.

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