Tutorials

Available for purchase at the shop.

Buy this as part of a bundle.

This is in the gold kit.

You can buy this as part of the gold kit.

When using the Habit Star for bad habits, you generally fold down the tab AFTER a successful day of avoiding your bad habit. But here’s a new idea I’ve been testing, and liking.

You can fold down a tab for “success” before each day. This essentially marks your commitment to living the day well. If you give in to your bad habit some time during the day, you would then unfold the tab.

This is psychologically advantageous in a couple of ways. First, we would have significant motivation to keep that tab folded down. We are more sensitive to loss than we are rewarded by gain, so we’ll be motivated not to lose that success. And if we succeed, we will still feel a strong sense of accomplishment and reward because we kept our precommitment. Finally, if we fold down the tab at the beginning of the day, we won’t have to remember to do it later.

This is the new way I’m using my Habit Star. I mentioned in my New Year’s Eve post that I’m going to gamble less this year. That’s what I’m using my Habit Star to track. So far, so good!

I named my Habit Star “Freedom” because that’s what we aim for when we weaken or destroy bad habits. It’s a more positive way to think of it than “Stop Gambling.” 🙂

NOTE: I’m using a blank green index card to label my Star because the wet erase markers didn’t erase after some time. It’s simple and easy to tape an index card to your star if you want to change your label. If you buy a habit star, it now comes with 3 blank index cards (blue, green, red) at no additional cost!

You can buy this as part of the gold kit.

The travel card has space to track two habits for two weeks. It’s sized as a regular business card for convenience. You can use the travel card to track both mini habits and elastic habits.

Mini habits are straight forward. Just write two mini habits in the boxes on the left and “X” or “” the days as you complete them.

For elastic habit tracking, write the habit in the top half of the habit box, and 3 win conditions directly below it (Mini, Plus, Elite). Since it’s limited space, I recommend having only one option for each. This is better suited for travel anyway since your options are generally more limited.

For elastic habit notation, I use one slash in the box for Mini, an X for Plus, and fill in the whole box for Elite.