The truth about habit tracking

It'll change your life — until it doesn't

Jan 30, 2025

I have tracked my habits every day for just over five years. That is 1,825 days’ worth of data I have in two small notebooks.

You could say I’ve made habit tracking a habit.

photo of a woman sitting in a window ledge holding a book — Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

I’ve got all this data about myself and that is great — were I to actually assess it. But the truth is that I stopped analyzing my habit tracking years ago. Meaning that, while I tick off my habits nightly and create new habit trackers monthly, I don’t spend the 30 minutes it might take each month to assess what’s actually going on in my life.

Why?

Too big a time commitment, probably. Or maybe it’s just a lack of necessity.

There’s a problem with this logic I’ve formulated — that I don’t need to analyze my data — and I am trying to process it as I write it (isn’t that what writing is for?)

Now that tracking my habits is a deeply ingrained habit for me, I treat it the same way I treat all my other habits: drink water, read books, go to bed early. I hardly think about those habits, I just do them. They are as much a part of me as the hair on my head. And I’m finding that habit tracking has become another piece of me, meaning I don’t think about it much, meaning I no longer do the very valuable thing that makes habit tracking so powerful: analyze the data.

1,825 days’ worth of data and I don’t know what any of it stands for.

To make this make sense, here’s how habit tracking works (skip to the next session if you’re an old pro):

The first thing you need is a notebook, and I don’t have much to say here because I’ve only ever used one kind of notebook to track my habits. I write about it at length in the post below, but it’s the Clear Habit Journal and it’s dotted so I can easily make my month’s tracker when I’ve used up all the pre-made ones.

Three different and necessary notebooks I use to keep my life on track

Kolina Cicero

Jan 9

Read full story

You can use any notebook. My only recommendation is that it has a grid or dots so you can see where to put your Xs.

To begin, make a column (the y axis) of all the habits you want to track in a month. Habits could include meditation, writing for 20 minutes, trying a new recipe, going for a walk, not eating processed sugar, no social media, etc. It doesn’t matter what the habits are so much as that they are important to you, both in terms of the things you want to spend your time doing and the things you don’t.

Across the top of the page (the x axis) you will number the days of the month. Each day you do your habit, you get a checkmark (I use an X because I like filling the entire square). Make sure to write your habits out so that you get an X if you do the behavior you are looking to do. For example, rather than write “eat processed sugar” as your habit, write “no processed sugar” so you can reward yourself at the end of each day. Yes, you’re an adult, but don’t underestimate the power of patting yourself on the back for doing something good.

Over the course of a month, you’ll see Xs scattered throughout your graph. You may see trends quickly. Other habits might take months of tracking in order to gain any real comprehension on what it all means. At the end of the month, you tally up how many times you got an X for any given habit, then write that number down in the final column so you can see how great you are.

So what does it all mean?

I don’t know.

I don’t know because now that tracking my habits is habitual for me, I don’t think about it much. I barely even tally up how many times I do any of my habits in a month. Were I interested in how many times I went to yoga in December, I could go look. But I rarely do.

So why am I still doing it?

Again: I don’t know.

Maybe because it’s just a thing I do now.

I do find that I think about my habits even when I’m not tallying and analyzing, though. Knowing I can get a check at the end of the night often influences my behavior throughout the day. If I know I won’t get my exercise check and I won’t get my no social media check and I won’t get my no meat check, I might make sure I meditate for five minutes before bed so that I don’t go a whole day without giving myself the adult equivalent of a gold star (and if gold stars are your thing, please buy yourself some gold stars to use for your own habit tracking).

I think the very act of writing out my intended habits each month and reading them nightly is beneficial, whether I assess any patterns that develop or not. But I wonder how much more effective it would all be if I was a different person; if I was the kind of person who liked data. Instead, I get by just knowing what my goals are and checking in with them on a daily basis.

I don’t know, maybe it’s all a waste of time. Maybe what started out as life-changing for me years ago — when it was all about awareness and discovery — has evolved into something more basic, like keeping tabs on myself.

Should you do it?

Sure, I suggest everyone try it out. You might be a data-driven person and could use this information to adapt and make changes and show up as the person you want to be daily. I do wonder if those who would use the data appropriately would be the same people who burn out from the whole process. I can’t say for sure, but I think the reason I’ve been able to keep going for so long is that I make it incredibly simple, so simple that it would be harder on me not to track my habits than it is to do it.

Have you ever tracked your habits? Am I totally missing the point by not assessing my data? Most importantly: what are you reading?

What I’m reading: Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan

Also: do you know any Substack writers who focus on either nonfiction books or are publishing their own fiction on Substack? Last week I did a BookStack roundup and left out those niches (not intentionally, I’m just not familiar with that corner of Substack). If you have recommendations, please share them.