How are those New Year’s resolutions going? If you’re close to throwing in the towel, it might be worth taking a look at why the resolution is close to failing. Is it reasonable? Is it actually what you wanted or is it an inspiration from others? Is it trackable? While the first two questions need to be answered and reflected upon by you, I might have a solution to the trackable item.
A lot of self-help articles concur that tracking progress can be a better way to reach a successful habit. Checking an item off a list can provide enough support to keep going on the hard days. Also, seeing a non-completed item for enough days in a row might provide enough motivation to get back into the habit. Most articles might suggest keeping an Excel worksheet in order to track everything. While I see the benefit of using Excel, there is something better that is always available, which is my iPhone and Habit List.
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The Overview
Habit List allows users to track habits and provide visual representations on progress. This encourages more success by seeing the results of your hard work or lack thereof. The app is quick to load and the design is simple but effective. It’s essentially a list of items that a user would like to complete on a certain schedule. Each habit’s status is communicated through a green or red indicator. Inside the colored indicator is the streak of days that a habit has been completed or not been completed.
The main view is nothing more than a list of items to complete — but try and keep the indicator circles green.
Getting started is usually the most difficult task, particularly when it comes to forming new habits. While Habit List cannot help you start the habit, it does shine when you have accumulated data. It is always encouraging to see most if not all of your habits completed several days in a row. The quick encouragement of completed double-digit days is motivational for those difficult times.
Old Dog, New Tricks
Setting up a new habit is as easy as hitting the plus sign in the main view. This will take you to a screen where you can name your habit, set a reminder, and the frequency the item should be completed.
I do not set a reminder for all of my habits but just the ones that I need to get done in the morning before I leave for work.
Using the frequency scheduler I can make certain habits only apply to certain days.
The frequency scheduler allows for unique customization for completing your habits. From my experience, there has always been a way to customize the schedule to meet my needs. Some examples include scheduling the habit for certain days; intervals such as every three days, or even non-specific days such as two days a week.
Monitoring Progress
While the colored bubbles are a good indicator of where you are standing at a glance, Habit List also offers other views to see the data from a higher level. Clicking a habit will open a calendar and stats view, which show your progress in different forms. In calendar view, the current month is shown which is able to be changed using the arrow buttons. A visual x is marked on the days which have been completed in the past and these x’s can be removed by a tap if you know that you did not complete a certain habit on the day. Underneath the calendar the frequency of the goal along with the current streak and the longest streak is shown.
Once a habit has been completed several days in a row, breaking that habit becomes harder and harder.
The stats view examines the same information as the calendar view but it is broken down weekly instead of monthly. This view computes the percentage completed and compares it to other weeks.
Completing an item before the reminder actually activates will silence the reminder until time the habit is due.
Habit List offers a variety of ways to see your progress which is important in a habit tracking app. Getting to these views is not all that easy. It took me a while to figure out how to actually arrive at the stats screens. You can find the stats by pressing on the habit name you created. A user also has to be careful not to hit the colored current status indicator because that will mark a habit as complete for the day. Unfortunately there is not a lot of room for error and I wish arriving at the stats screen could be redesigned.
Conclusion
One reason habits are hard to keep up with is because of the new nature of the desired activity or trait. By adding the ability to track these items it can help you successfully achieve a new habit. Habit List is able to track all of your resolutions to help turn these into habits. By utilizing reminders to avoid forgetting to complete an item and monitoring your progress through the stat screen a resolution can be turned into a habit in no time.