Tutorials

Available for purchase at the shop (USA shipping) or on ebay (Global shipping).

Buy this on the shop or as part of a bundle.

This is most useful if bought in a bundle, like the gold kit or silver kit.

Let me show you my journey so far with these trackers. It’s been great! I am still in the process of improving myself and this system. But even in its current state, it’s already the best system in the world for building good habits. Notice the variation, day by day. Doesn’t it look a lot like normal life with its ups and downs? This system seamlessly fits my life and ambitions each day, which is why I’m still just happy to be using it as when I started!

My Trackers (Filled Out)

Things to note…

The first tracker (at the top) was an earlier design. These took a lot of refining and experimentation to perfect.

I don’t tally my score every month. Why? Since I travel a fair amount, a month with 26 days vs a month with 31 days isn’t really useful or fair. I could average my score on a per-day basis, but I don’t do these habits for the score, I do them to benefit my life! Also, if I have a really unimpressive month, I might not calculate my score because I know it’s below my best. I’m most interested to calculate the score of months I think are near or at my best.

Habit growth is rarely linear and that’s okay! My worst months were September (bottom) and October (top right). September was my 5th month of Elastic Habits. I bought a house and moved that month and just had a tough time overachieving in the chaos. But I still showed up both of those months, and look at what happened… November (bottom right) was my best month yet!

The only reason my November score is lower than July (top left) is because I left for a cruise on the last day and decided not to give myself the “Habit Master” bonus of 20 points. That’s debatable, since I showed up on all of the days I was available.

Seeing how September and October went for me shows how important and powerful this system is. I was supposed to quit those months because I was too busy. But instead, I did what I could, which kept me on track.

My Setup

Things to note…

My stickers are close to my tracker. It’s important to have your stickers very close to your tracker because it makes it super easy to mark your wins. If they’re even a few feet away, as crazy as it sounds, that might be enough to dissuade you from using them. I recommend using magnets like this or to tape the sticker sheets to the back of your tracker so that they hang down in a similar way.

I used a tracker card on my cruise. This travel tracker card is great, conveniently sized as a business card! I set up two elastic habits in fitness and reading. One “/” was Mini, an “X” was Plus, and a filled in square was Elite. You can see it taped to my tracker in the picture above.

This is part of the previous starter kit.

The Elastic Habit Poster is designed to display 3 elastic habits in one place. The habits go in the left column, and their win conditions go in the following three columns.

You can fit about three win conditions in each box. If you’re unsure of what to put in each box, start with just one mini habit in the mini box. You can always add more options and win conditions later!

You can buy this individually or 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 individually (10 pack) or 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.