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How to Start a Bullet Journal Habit Tracker
Do you absolutely love looking at habit trackers in people’s bullet journals but believe your life isn’t interesting enough to keep a tracker? You may also feel as if there are no personal benefits to keeping a habit tracker. I beg to differ on both points.
There’s no prerequisite saying you have to have an interesting life to keep a habit tracker. In fact, keeping a habit tracker can help you learn about yourself in ways you can’t imagine. Setting one up is actually pretty easy, but sometimes finding ideas to fill them is easier said than done.
Habit trackers come in all shapes, sizes, and varieties. It’s actually very interesting to see the various ideas people create in their bullet journal habit trackers! This article will help you find all the ideas you need to set up your habit tracker for success!
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1. Benefits of a Habit Tracker
So you may wonder- if a habit tracker is only measuring whether you do or do not do something in your daily routine, why bother keeping one in the first place?
Well, you’re right; habit trackers definitely have no particular expectations toward them (though, the items you select can definitely gear towards behaviors and actions you’d like to take!).
The beauty of the habit tracker is it helps you learn more about yourself.
Source: @my_blue_sky_design
Materials in Image: Habit Tracker Sticker
Are you doing certain things consistently? Are you not doing specific items at all? Or, is your activity relatively sporadic?
The knowledge if understanding how you operate is truly valuable information for you to have. If you struggle with mental illness, this information can be shared with your therapist so they have an idea of your daily habits. You personally become more aware of what your actions are like.
Read: 5 Ways Bullet Journals Improve Mental Health
Many people use a bullet journal for personal development, thus, information in your habit trackers can help guide you toward practices that truly benefit your style. More on that later, further down I’ll explain how you can use the information in your habit tracker to do just that.
2. Habit Tracker Ideas
The next beauty of the habit tracker is you can literally track anything. There are no specific guidelines to follow, there’s no set rule saying you need to track a set amount of habits, and you can change them on a monthly or weekly basis.
Materials in Image: Scribbles that Matter Dot Grid Notebook, Sakura Micron Pens, Tombow Twintone Markers
Yet, sometimes finding ideas is a bit challenging! I’ve created a comprehensive list of habit tracker ideas to help provide you some guidance and information on items you can track on a regular basis.
For ease, I’ve separated ideas into many different categories. You can pick as few or as many from a category as you like.
Personal
Personal habits are those that revolve around your general daily living tasks. Here are a handful of ideas you can track for yourself!
- Woke up on time
- Went to bed on time
- Took a shower
- Took medications
- Ate breakfast
- Took vitamins
- No spend
- Read a book
- No TV
- Paid bills
- Took a nap
- No electronics an hour before bed
- Pray
- Read Bible (or other spirituality books)
- Miracle Morning
- Use planner/bullet journal
- Slept 8 hours
- Write
- Brain Dump
- Took pet for a walk
- Journaled
- Learned something new
- Practice an instrument
- Listen to a podcast
- Completed your goals
- Tried something new
Relationships
Relationship habit tracking can help you understand how you are spending time with family, friends, and other important people in your life.
- Called family
- Wrote a letter to a friend
- Hang out with friends
- Go on a date
- Family Outing
- No using cell phone with other people
- Family outing
- Compliment significant other
- Sex tracker
- Went to church
- Went to support group
- Did something nice for a friend
- Volunteered in your community
Social Media (personal)
You can track social media usage or even communication with others on social media!
- Limit time on social media
- Posted on Instagram
- No social media at work
- Talked with somebody on messenger
- Wrote a nice comment for a friend/family member
Blog
Starting a blog is a lot of work so you may find value in monitoring your activities.
- Write a new blog post
- Post a new blog post
- Optimize an old blog post
- Reply to blog comments
- Reply to social media comments
- Pinned posts to Pinterest
- Replied to follower emails
- Watched educational video
- Worked on blog course homework
- Participated in a blogging group
Work
Tracking activities at work are super easy (you could even do these in a bullet journal specifically meant for work, too!)
- Packed a lunch for work
- No gossiping with coworkers
- Received praise
- Finished a project
- Cleaned workstation
- Made a certain number of work calls daily.
- Finished your to-do list
- Respond to work emails
- Went to a meeting
- Presented at a meeting
Health
Everybody is so health conscious these days that you’ll probably want to add at least a few of these essentials in your habit trackers!
- Eat at a restaurant
- Ate certain amounts of fruit
- Ate certain amounts of vegetables
- Avoid junk food
- Drink alcohol
- Ate a certain amount of calories
- Ate a certain amount of macros (proteins, fats, carbs)
- Drank a certain amount of water
- Exercised
- Went outside
- Went to the gym
- Cooked meals at home
- Took the stairs
- Parked far away
- Meditate
- Yoga
- Period
- Brush teeth
- Floss teeth
- No cigarettes
- 10,000 steps
- Logged food for the day
- Washed face
- Used essential oils
Cleaning
Can’t remember when you last did a specific chore? Your habit tracker may come to the rescue for your housework!
- Washed the dishes
- Made the bed
- Vacuum
- Water Plants
- Cleared off table
- Laundry
- Put clothes away
- Wiped off counter
- Picked up the floor
- Put trash in the garbage bin
- Mowed the lawn
- Shoveled snow
Kids
If you have kids, you can track information about them as well!
- Played with your kids
- Bath night
- Went to bed on time
- Potty training
- No discipline
- Did their chores
- Did their homework
- Read a book before bed
- Wake up during the night
- Poop or pee accident
- Packed lunch for school
- Playdate
School
See how studious you are by tracking your school activities and assignments.
- Did your homework
- Read your textbook
- Studied for a test
- Met with a tutor
- Participated in extracurricular activities
- Went to all your classes
- Participated in group discussions
- Got a good grade on an assignment
- Had a pop quiz
3. Habit Tracker Layout Ideas
Even more variable than the items you can track in your habit planner is the way you can track them! I’ve selected a wonderful variety of trackers created by other bullet journal artists below.
Source: @study.with.alexx
Materials in Image: Zebra Mildliners
Source: @natalie.linnea.handmade
Materials in Image: Leuchtturm1917 Dot Grid Notebook, Faber Castell Pens
Source: @huffllepuffengineer
Materials in Image: Leuchtturm1917 Dot Grid Notebook
Source: @seras.bullet.journal
Materials in Image: Filofax Notebook, Tombow Dual Brush Pens
Source: @borneobujo
Materials in Image: Artline Drawing Pen
Source: @augustrose.doodles
Materials in Image: Copper Leuchtturm1917 Dot Grid Notebook
Source: @bujo.esthetic
Materials in Image: Muji Pen, Crayola Supertip Marker
Source: @bountifulcolours
Materials in Image: Scribbles that Matter Dot Grid Notebook, Tombow Dual Brush Pens
There is no shortage of amazing bullet journal layout ideas for epic habit trackers! If you find yourself a little short on time for set up, there are some alternative solutions for you to create amazing trackers and save time!
4. Weekly or Monthly Habit Tracker
So there are two ways you can create habit tracker layouts, and above you saw both types; weekly habit trackers and monthly habit trackers.
Which one is best? It really varies based on your preferences and styles.
Weekly trackers have the advantage of being able to make adjustments easily in short periods of time. The longest you commit to tracking something is a week, and then you can change it the next week if you’d like.
However, since these types of trackers are in your weekly layout, you’ll probably not have as much space to adjust them as you prefer. It can also be more challenging to organize the information from them.
Monthly trackers do take more time to create initially; however, making it part of your monthly layout can be a great way to organize all of your monthly spreads in one place. It’s not as simple to change your habits as you have to wait an entire month to create a new chart.
5. Organize Your Information
So now that you’ve completed your first few habit trackers, what do you actually do with this information? You definitely don’t want to do all the work to create them, fill them out, and then NEVER use them again, right?
Because, if you did that, then why do you keep a habit tracker in the first place?
Every month I try to take the time and go through my habit tracker, my mood tracker, and other trackers/collections I keep to see if I can find any interesting patterns in my behavior. If I do, then I can log that information in my monthly review.
I can also observe what things I’m not maintaining (or maintaining consistently), so I can choose different items to use in my habit tracker the next month!
If you’d like to learn more about how to set up and use a monthly review, head over to this post here and learn all about them!
Set Up Your Habit Tracker Now
There’s no time like the present to start setting up your first habit tracker. The benefits of keeping a habit tracker far outweigh the negatives: you learn more about yourself, you can literally track anything you want, and there are tons of different layout ideas to try. Even if you don’t have enough time to make one yourself due to lack of time (and trust me, you can keep a bullet journal with limited time) or artistic talent, you also have a plethora of options that basically do the set-up work for you.
Plus, with all the different ideas you have to track in a habit tracker, you’ll find plenty of awesome ideas to put in your tracker. Maybe you’ll find some ideas you’ve never even considered!
Source: @bujotrulla
Materials in Image: Copper Leuchtturm1917 Dot Grid Notebook
Hopefully, this post provided you some amazing guidance on how to create amazing habit trackers along with ideas on what to track.
If you’d like to learn more about trackers in general and how they can benefit your life, check out these articles below!
Do you keep habit trackers in your bullet journal? If so, what types of activities do you track? I’d love to hear all about it in the comments!
If you got ideas from this article
Help others by sharing on Pinterest!
Thank you for this! I’m still on my first bullet journal, and have wanted to track mre, but could never think of things to track. Right now I’m only tracking the number of pages I read and the number of steps I make. This gave me some great new ideas to add. I’m not going overboard (I think);) I don’t want to add too much and get burned out, because I love it so far.
Most are useful, but some are quite disturbing… I mean, keeping track of your teeth brushing?? You should do it every day… weird!
For many yes. For kids? For people who don’t brush their teeth? For people who naturally get a ton of cavaties and need proof they actually brush? Not too weird!
I mean also good for people who have a hard time maintaining personal hygiene, people with serious mental health problems etc.
um… what if you forgot or something! you never now i mean that’s me if you think it’s wrong for you keep it to your self she was just suggesting it for you but you did not like it so you said something i mean keep it to your self
Hey Sandra – I’m sure that it never occurred to you, but many people who use bullet journaling (or journaling in general) do so as a form of self-care — which is also what brushing your teeth, bathing, taking vitamins, eating healthy, not smoking or drinking, all of that? Is.
If you’ve never struggled with depression, anxiety, ADD, or another issue that affects your ability to remember to do basic things, then you wouldn’t understand this list and might in fact think it’s “weird”. But your comment is also hurtful the way you said it. Your lack of understanding others doesn’t entitle you to be rude, does it?
Maybe you should start a gratitude log in your bullet journal, and include things like “I am grateful to not truly understand depression,” so that maybe next time you would remember that you’ve got it better than others. Sometimes, getting out of bed takes all they’ve got to give that day, and no one deserves to be shamed for it.
Thank you for this response. It is such a struggle for so many of us every day to do ” basic” tasks and makes things so much worse when people claim its “disgusting” or “gross” or anything along those lines.
Some of us have depression or other conditions that make it very difficult to get out of bed daily let alone have the energy to shower or brush our teeth
Hey, it’s great that habit has stuck for you! I suppose if you struggle with this then tracking it could help to lay its foundations. More effective than being shamed at least but I could be wrong. 🙂
I didn’t see the other comments. Didn’t mean to continue the pile on. Apologies F
I suffer from adult-onset ADHD. The most difficult part of my day is getting myself out the door, for anything – an event, my work day, the gym, a date. I dread the frustration of not being able to just do simple organizational tasks that most other people (including me, for most of my life, until I started struggling and was eventually diagnosed) just do without issues. Many people I know find it ridiculous, comical, irritating; and many blame me for being lazy and inconsiderate because I have ‘not allowed myself enough time’ or ‘not bothered to organize myself’. Anyone with ADHD knows exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve learned ways to cope with this issue, and having a habit tracker has been a huge boost to my self-esteem. It also serves as a list to prepare myself for going out. I’ve customized for daily needs and have others for specific events. Something so simple as “leave your keys in the desk drawer” or take your inhalers AM/PM, drink 4 L water – they serve as both reminders and encouragement as I get to color in a square each time I complete something. If I’m focused on a big project and ‘in the zone – hyperfocused’ I can forget to eat, shower, brush my teeth because time in that zone does not exist.
Habit trackers are meant to be customized, used as reminders and rewards – there is something in them for everyone!
Amazing i loved it