A few months ago, I downloaded an app called “Way of Life” - a habit tracker. This app allows you to track any number of habits you wish by entering them in your daily to-do list and checking them off one by one as you accomplish them each day. You can track good and bad habits.
What I have found from tracking my habits through the Way of Life app is that when I track good habits, I feel more compelled to do them. There is a real sense of accomplishment you get when you check off each habit every day, and they start to build up into a long chain. This sense of accomplishment I think, is the driver to the desire to repeat the habits. By tracking them through this app, you get a visual representation of your ongoing accomplishments. Also, you don’t want to break the chain, once it starts to build up.
Some of the habits I’ve been tracking are meditating, walking, reading, and, since I’m a film scholar, watching a good movie. I find that I’m eager to tackle these kinds of habits each day and try to get them out of the way quickly. Hence, my sense of accomplishment.
The key to the tracking of habits is to make them relatively simple and easy to accomplish, but at the same time, positive and growth-oriented. This act of habit-tracking has been instrumental in my current existence of being at home as a result of a pandemic lay-off at my job. It has given me a sense of direction and daily goal-focus.
The free version of the Way of Life app allows you to track a total of three habits. With a small one time fee, you can track an unlimited number. I’m not sure why tracking my habits has made them so much more important; it is not an actual law or demand that I must do each of them. But somehow, it sets up an internal mechanism that compels you to return to it over and over again. Perhaps not everyone can benefit from this, but I have found tremendous value from this app. What is measured gets repeated.
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