Habit Tracker
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Synopsis
Need to create new habits? It takes between two to eight months for a habit to stick. We've created this Habit Tracker spreadsheet template in Microsoft Excel to track daily, weekly, and monthly habits across multiple habit categories that can be color coded. Gamify your habits with custom reward amounts for each habit completed, and track progress from month to month or year to date for any year between 2023 and 2033. Supports 400 daily, weekly, and monthly habits across multiple habit types. Like a bullet journal in spreadsheet form, achieve work-life balance with this work-life planner!
We'll now share how to use this Habit Tracker template we created to use gamification and simple design to finally create new habits that stick.
How to create new habits
How long does it take to form a new habit? According to James Clear, the author of the book Atomic Habits, it can take between two to eight months to make a habit "automatic." If you've ever wondered "how to achieve my goals", or "how to create new habits", this Habit Tracker spreadsheet is for you. But James Clear says the key is to focus on habits, not goals, as the achievement of a goal is only a momentary change, not a sustained change.
Human brains are hardwired to take the path of least resistance, which makes the adoption of new habits hard. Instead, James recommends a four-step process: Make them obvious, make them attractive, make them easy, and make them satisfactory. You don't need a habit tracker app or online habit tracker to do this. Our Habit Tracker spreadsheet template does all four of James' suggestions. Check it out:
First, the Habit Tracker spreadsheet makes your habits obvious. Under the Fields tab, enter the habit categories of different habits you want to track, such as creative, career, financial, or fitness, next to the color you want those habits to be on your tracker. In this "color selector" section, you also have the option to customize the color you each week of the month to be, with week 5 representing any extra days depending on the month.
Below the "color selector", define which new habits to learn across each of the categories in the "habit selector." These could be daily… weekly… or monthly habits… Up to 10 daily, weekly, and monthly habits can be tracked across each of the 15 habit types for a total of 450 habits that can be tracked at one time - not that James Clear would recommend that!
Once all the habits to implement have been added, at the bottom, assign a reward amount for each of the habits to be tracked in the "Reward selector" section. For each day that a daily habit is checked off, that dollar amount is rewarded - which makes the accomplishment of tasks attractive.
How to track habits
Time to make the habits to track easy and satisfactory. On the "Monthly habits" tab, enter any start month in the filter at the top. The habit tracker is now set from the first of that month. Your progress complete to date, and total earned to date for the whole month are listed underneath.
Each of the habits defined before appears according to their color type in the daily habit list. For each day a habit is completed, check off that day on the daily habit tracker. Boom - easy! As each daily habit is completed, the daily completed percentage goes up. And as daily habits are completed across an entire week, the weekly progress bar fills up. Underneath that, the reward earned for each day is tallied. The total earned to date box then tallies the total amount of daily reward earned for the whole month.
But there are weekly and monthly tasks to accomplish as well. Each weekly task, like visiting family, washing the car, or hosting a game night is listed out.
For each week a task is completed, that week can be checked off. The progress bar at the bottom tracks the percent of the week completed, with the total weekly amount earned to date.
Finally, the monthly habits are listed, with a checkbox to check if they've been completed that month, a monthly progress bar, and any monthly reward earned.
The daily, weekly, and monthly earnings are all summed at the top to see how much progress has been made across all habits to date. *Cha-ching sound* Look at that - isn't that satisfactory?! Remember, if you want to make it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfactory to create new habits, you can download and customize this habit tracker right now.
Track your progress for a whole year
Let's say you want to track habits in February - when you change the date filter, clear the checkboxes and start over. To keep your progress, either duplicate this tab or use the Full year habits tab. This tab works the same as the Monthly habits tab but includes all 12 months of the current year all in one spot to track progress to date over time.
In this view, the habit rows are hidden by default, so unhide them to see all your habits in one place. When the next year hits, duplicate this tab, select 2024, and clear the progress to start over.
As months of progress go by, the progress boxes at the top will sum up all your progress to date. The only question left is what are you going to do with all that cash you're paying yourself?!
James Clear says that 1% improvement every day is all anyone needs to be successful thanks to the laws of compounding interest. With this habit tracker, you'll have everything you need to track your progress toward consistent, continuous improvement.
Remember, you can download and customize this habit tracker spreadsheet template in Microsoft Excel or Google sheets right now. Now, go check out our To Do List spreadsheet template for more tips and tools to maximize your personal productivity.
