Habit tracker

Print one sheet per month and put it somewhere you pass every day. A tracker on a screen has to be opened; a tracker on the fridge asks the question by itself.

1. Write the month at the top, then cross out the day numbers your month does not have, so a 30 day month has one square struck through in every row.
2. Name each habit in a way you can answer yes or no to. "Ten minutes of Spanish" works, "learn Spanish" does not.
3. Start with two or three habits and leave the other rows empty. Ten rows is the capacity of the sheet, not a suggestion for how many to start at once.
4. Attach each habit to something you already do at a fixed time. The cue is what carries the behaviour once the novelty wears off.
5. Fill the square the same day. Marking a week at once from memory turns the sheet into a story about the week rather than a record of it.
6. Write the current run of days in the streak column at the right, and use the notes box for what got in the way.

A worked example: a row named "20 minutes of reading, after dinner" ends the month with 22 squares filled and a gap in the middle of the third week. The notes box says "travel, 4 days". That is a useful month, and the gap is information about travel weeks rather than evidence of failure.

Missing a single day did no measurable harm to habit formation in the research, so a broken row is not a reset. The Time Guide covers what the habit studies actually found, including why the famous 66 day figure is a median rather than a rule.