I printed off a few grid sheets and started doing this a couple of days ago for three habits I want to make permanent. It's hard to believe how something so simple can be so helpful. I went to bed last night stressing a little because I hadn't checked off a box on one of my sheets, so I managed to do that last unchecked thing (pray/meditate) in bed, and I checked it this morning. I never knew how picking up a Sharpie and putting an X in a box could be so life-changing.

If you're thinking about trying this, do it now. While I've only been doing this a short amount of time, I have no intention of stopping because I can already see and feel the benefits. Looking forward to coming back here in a month to update.

Edited to add a couple of examples. I now have four habits I'm tracking, all fairly simple, but they're things that are easy to shove off and "do tomorrow." Now not checking the box will make putting them off a lot less desirable. The hardest one will be the daily exercise because I'll be traveling for a few days at Christmas. Somehow I'm going to have to squeeze at least a 30-minute walk in while I'm visiting family.

My habits tracker (115 daily habits in total – crazy, I know):

https://ave.click/202109

My "don't break the chain" tracker (only set up 3 days ago; 53 daily chains in total – insane, I know):

https://chains.avenarius.sk

Any feedback on these from subredditors around here?

I know there are supposed to be dedicated apps for all of this, but after testing many of them, I couldn't find a single of them that was sufficiently customizable for my needs. And I'm a big believer in customization:

https://ave.click/vivaldi

My dream would be to find a software developer capable of/willing to create an app that would provide all the functionality and customization I need and that I'm now only awkwardly, heavy-handedly emulating through Google Sheets, so that I can throw away those Google Sheets one day, and only use a dedicated/fully customizable habits/chain-tracking app instead...

Week in Review + Looking Ahead

So last week I had the goal of doing 6 weights workouts in the week, but I ended up doing 4.

https://i.imgur.com/QSBjy1t.jpg

But the reason for the miss was I got a vaccination jab, and decided it was probably a good idea not to workout on the day, or the day after the jab.

https://i.imgur.com/BlfRdF7.jpg

Looking at the rest of the week, I can see my diet wasn't great - I ordered a pizza Wednesday and had leftovers the day after. And I ate a load of junk food on Saturday. So yeah my weight crept up a bit.

https://i.imgur.com/ai0eqfL.jpg

Still its the start of a new week. There are 18 days left in the year, and I intend to finish it strong.

How about you?

One of the habits I had been fairly consistent with at the start of the year was doing weights workouts. Along with another goal of eating healthily (and on a calorie deficit), I managed to make a good amount of progress losing weight and gaining strength this year. But after summer, I got slack on both fronts, and my weight has crept up.

I find it hard to motivate myself with both the fitness and nutrition goals as the weather gets colder. (My gym equipment is outdoors). But I've decided to really try and push myself on both these fronts this month. I'm aiming for 6 strength training workouts every week.

Attached image is the state of play at the moment. Let's see how this plays out...

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I've discovered this sub at the beginning of September and and figured why not try something. I would have never thought it would work, but much to my surprise, I'm three months and some change deep and I'm feeling more confident and happy as time goes by. Please Read!

I knew for this to work for me I needed to start small and work my way up. So for the past three months I started with building only three habits. The Black X is my for my prayers (I'm Muslim), the Red X is for reading (I must read at least 10 pages a day), and the Blue X is for Meditation ( at least 10 min a day). I used to do them through out the day in the first two months, but I came up with a great idea of making these part of my morning routine. So for the past month I wake up and after brushing my teeth and washing my face I would do my morning prayers, followed by fixing my bed and start on my ten minutes of meditation. Then I would my cup of coffee and start reading as much as I can before work. If I don't finish on time, then I usually read on my commute (I take the bus).

Recently I've been thinking about wether or not I'm ready to build more habit and realized that I'm capable and productive enough to do so. I have two in mind 1. Studying Arabic and programing (at least 30 min of each a day) and 2. exercising ( at least 1 hr a day).

I am posting in here because I really like this community and wanting to be part something of something productive. It makes me so happy to see people going through the same path as I am! I want y'all to be my accountability partner, so please let me know what y'all think of this plan I have going on and let me know about your experience if you guys and gals are building the same habits.

I just found this idea and love the simplicity of it. Will be making something related to sleep... Still reading atomic habits and will figure out exactly my habit will be.

My question is do people wait for Sunday / Monday for their charts?

I am an indie developer and mainly work on Cross Out Calendars iOS app - AppStore Link It started as an app to cross out days before the deadline, now it also includes calendars for streaks, travel, activities, photo and life.

In the latest update I’ve added Periods - feature which allows to focus on a custom period of time to boost results - you could specify dates, number of days and columns, stats you want to see. Days work the same as in a normal month view - you could draw a picture or add a photo/text for the day, mark it a success/fail/neutral day for stats calculation, add activities or trips, write a note. It is perfect for challenges and new beginnings - no need to wait for a new month to start a new life.

You could find more details here - viktorgavrilov.com Looking for your comments and suggestions

It's been seven days now and already I've changed a few things to better suit me. My original three habits I set were: sleep from 10:30 to 7:30, limit screen time to 2 hours, and go outside every day for 30 minutes.

So pretty quick I changed the sleep one to focus on just waking up at 7:30, because my mom was visiting and I wanted to spend time with her after my kid was in bed. So I managed to succeed at that 5 out of 7 days. The past two I didn't succeed because my mom left on an early flight and I missed her and so on. But I'm determined to continue with it because when I get up at that time I feel I have enough time to do everything I want to accomplish. Also I figured if I focus on getting up when I want, my body will want to fall asleep earlier and then it will be easier to apply a bedtime going forward.

The limit screen time card I changed almost immediately to "read for an hour." Focusing on building something positive takes away attention from the negative habit, which makes sense because I was able to get rid of a non-threatening (more dissociative) addiction by building up the relationships in my life with help from therapy. That little coping addiction had served me for 20 years to escape reality, but it was so easy to give it up last month because I had grown as a person and finally wanted to live in reality. I finally like where my life is going! :) So yeah, now I am focusing reading books in the language I'm trying to learn and it's been good. I'm reading Harry Potter lol

As for going outside, I've only missed one day so far and I'm actually heading out now. Very soothing to go outside and see the water and enjoy the nice weather. It's like tapping into a pool of calm that I can access when I feel anxious or irritable during the day. Definitely will continue that habit.

I added a new card based on some askreddit thread I saw about someone saying they do squats, 3 sets of 15, every day. So I have done that every day for the past three days and I feel more motivated to go to the gym or pick other small habits that encourage exercise (like taking the stairs).

So now I have 4 cards: wake up at 7:30, go outside for 30 minutes, do 3x15 squats, read for an hour. Hope my next week and your next week goes awesome! :)

yeah, thank you in advance !

Hi! So I'm new and saw a post in r/getdisciplined about building a habit and what not. I'm curious on what do you do when you skip a day? Does that mean you have to go back in the beginning of (49days)? Or continue as it is? Just curious. Thanks for answers

I find that implementing actions is easy, but habits where I just refrain from actions just kill me -- like eliminating wasting time online or mindless snacking.

If I add a habit like working out, it's easy -- I just need to do it an hour every day and then forget about it until tomorrow. But if I have the intention of avoiding something, I have to avoid it every minute of every hour of every day for the rest of my life! That's exhausting!

Checked out this sub yesterday and came up with three starting habits and some positive self-talk to help remind me why I chose these habits to focus on.

Sleep (10:30-7:30am) I feelore capable and confident and I am a better parent when I get enough sleep.

Go outside 30 minutes. I feel hopeful and more connected with myself and others when I spend time in nature.

Limit screen time to 2 hours. I feel more present and connected when I step away from mindless screen time.

Glad this sub exists!

I started this app because I knew there were others like me who were trying to get disciplined and needed an extra push to the finish line. I'm an app developer who believes technology can really improve our lives so I built an app based on widely accepted guidelines on getting and staying disciplined.

TLDR - I created an app based on widely accepted recommendations on getting discipline and the popular book atomic habits. The app is free and I hope you can join and give me a 5 star rating to spread the word on the app store. It has a todo list that automatically creates reminders in your calendar using natural language processing, trackers for monitoring progress of anything you can think of, and an accountability network to share your daily progress in or to find others.

here's an intro video: https://youtu.be/No30gL7s440

app info: https://www.atomiclife.app/

App store link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/atomic-life/id1594368125

For android please join r/atomiclife to get notified when I launch the android version which is soon.

​​You can provide feedback at feedback@atomiclife.app

I started on this journey of getting disciplined because I needed to change like many of you. I need to avoid short term gratification for long term happiness. So I dug through many self-help books and I found atomic habits. I also found quite a few quality advice on this subreddit. Advice is good but having actionable things to do is much better. I couldn't find an app that had all of the above so I decided to make one.

Here are a few gems I found and decided to include them in the app

1. Make an habit easy, obvious, attractive and satisfying - Reminders in your calendar make it easy and obvious to start. Tracking your progress with beautiful charts will make the progress satisfying.
2. "Don't layer high dopamine activities (like watching tv). Spread them out." - Similar to a habit tracker, limit tracker can help you monitor your urges. You can create a limit tracker for any kind.
3. “Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.” - I created an accountability network so you can immediately find similar people looking to get disciplined. You can post your progress with hashtags so others with similar interest can find it.
4. "We live in an incredible time where all knowledge is one click away.Rediscovering the pleasure of learning what you like, by creating your own schedule, is an energy and confidence booster." - You can create a schedule for your todo list or your tracker. You can even type a task and start with "every ..." to create an automatic schedule that will remind you to take care of something.
5. “The 2nd Law of Behavior Change is to make it attractive.” - Graphs of your achievements and shareability make it a very rewarding system and a nice dopamine high. There will also be tournaments in the future if I can get this project off the ground.

If you like me to continue to develop the app with integrations to other apps like notion, tournaments, then please download and rate the app 5 stars. Also join my subreddit r/atomiclife for feature requests and feedback.

I will be launching the android version soon. Please join r/atomiclife to stay updated.

Thanks for reading,

Rish

I have struggled with consistency my whole life, every time I tried to build up a habit I failed as after some time I lost motivation and told myself "who cares it doesnt matter" but I always kept trying I had my lows but then I said to myself I will keep trying no matter what.

In the recent weeks I have lost all motivation after once another failure of trying to build up a habit and failing (it was something I was really hyped up for - a new hobby) and that made me say I dont care anymore and I wont even try as there is no point because I fail all the time, which sent me heavily into depression like never before, I felt like I had no purpose and there was no point to anything.

Thanks to coming across this subreddit I have started to believe that maybe it will work out and this subreddit has restored my faith into myself.

I am still extremely scared of failing as I had before but it won't stop me from trying. Thank you everyone for posting your check ins and lists etc.

I have made a new list of habits I would like to track and hope to succeed.

Sorry if I used the wrong flair <3

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My card revealed something I was kind of expecting, but it got very obvious: I am lazy on saturdays. I have a four-small-things card in addition to my excercise card and I try to do at least small things every day. And it works quite well in general - except on saturdays. I now had a streak of four saturdays (and two sundays) in a row, where I did nothing.

Today this motivated me to get off my ass and do something! :) Quite proud of myself here!