Guides
Practical guides to building habits, keeping a routine and completing a 30-day challenge.
Paper habit tracker vs an app: which actually works
Paper wins on friction and visibility; an app wins on memory and evidence. Here is what each is better at, and how to make an app behave like paper.
How to track a habit you don't do every day
Three times a week on a daily grid means every off day reads as a miss. Here is how to pick between fixed days, a weekly quota and an interval, and fix the streak.
Habit tracker vs to-do list: which one holds what
A to-do list holds things that get finished; a tracker holds things that get repeated. Put a habit on a list and every missed day becomes a debt you cannot pay.
How many habits should you track at once?
Fewer than you want to. The limit is on habits still in progress, not habits you have. Five tracked habits is how people lose four in one bad week.
Habit stacking: how to attach a new habit to one you already have
After I [existing habit], I will [new habit]. Here is what makes an anchor reliable, why one habit per anchor matters, and how to diagnose a stack that stopped.
How to restart a habit after breaking it
A missed day costs almost nothing; the response to it costs the habit. Here is how to tell resuming from restarting, and what actually broke.
How long it actually takes to form a habit
The 21-day rule comes from a 1960 book about plastic surgery. The research says a median of 66 days, with a range of 18 to 254. The range is the useful part.
Habit tracking without notifications: a quieter method
Reminders stop working the moment you learn to swipe them away. Here is how to build habit tracking that runs on placement and review instead of alerts.