Tracking

While Daily Repetition is about the habit itself, Tracking is about making sure we stick to our commitment of Daily Repetition. Essentially, Tracking adds rigor and discipline to the process of Daily Repetition. In a perfect world, tracking your progress would not be required. But in a perfect world, we would not need things like habits at all.

Implementing habits, as you now know, is an ongoing process. It requires stamina, discipline, and consistency. Sustainable habit implementation has to be done in a controlled way. Just thinking, I will now do this [insert habit] every time or every day will not work. We need to work systematically and efficiently: we need to track our habits.

Tracking your habits is the single most important thing to ensure sustainable habit implementation. That is, apart from the habit itself.

Habit Tracking must be simple just like the habit itself has to be simple. If the Tracking System is too complex, we face the same problems that occur when our change is too big. The Tracking System I propose is very simple. In fact, I briefly introduced it in the part on Simplicity in Tracking. We differentiate three states for every day: success, failure, and skipping. Success means you reached your Completion Threshold, failure implies you missed it. Skipping means you did not complete the habit, and this can happen due to various reasons. One might be that you have days of skipping that are planned, and you also could have worked into your HabitSystem the unforeseen obstacles that occasionally take place.

Now that you can differentiate between the three states for each day and the reasons for skipping, let’s take a closer look at why exactly Tracking is essential.

What is measured can be managed

Every business relies on a plethora of data. Managers need this data to make decisions because without it, managers are merely guessing. A business will achieve more success when data is tracked and decisions are made based on this information. You may not be a manager, and Habit Tracking is a lot less demanding than data handling in a business context. But the HabitSystem, just like any business, will do better in the long run with a Tracking System. It is true when they say, “What is measured can be managed.”

The mere act of writing down or capturing your daily habit progress will allow you to manage it.

Thus, the act of tracking habits becomes a habit in itself.

And by measuring your progress, you can make inferences. You may see patterns, and more importantly, you can easily view your progress. Tracking also enables you to spot problem areas and make adjustments to your HabitSystem that will help you achieve long-term success.

The creation of streaks and chains

The concept of streaks and chains is not new. If I recall correctly, it became popular due to the TV series, Seinfeld, where the idea of don’t break the chain was made popular. The basic premise is this: every day you fulfill your habit, your streak increases, and if you miss one day, your streak is lost completely. Consequently, you want your streak to grow longer and longer. And obviously, this only works when you do it every single day.

The concept of a streak can be better understood by likening the steady, building growth to that of the oak tree’s crown; in the beginning, there are only a few branch systems and it may not seem like much. But over time, it grows lush and full, expanding and compounding on its own growth.

This visualization is quite powerful. Now imagine you have built up a streak of 200 consecutive days. Would you want to fail on the 201st day? Probably not. As soon as your streak has grown large enough, you will try to maintain it.

The idea of the streak requires one habit characteristic: Simplicity. Afterwards, it is easy to look at a streak of 200 days and think, Yep, I will not break it. However, how did the situation look when you started? At the beginning your streak is at 0. And any streak below enough days—which will vary from person to person—is hard to maintain. It will not feel bad to break the chain. The thing that is necessary to realize, then, is that it is easier to maintain the streak than it is to break it. That is where the Simplicity that we learned about in the last chapter comes into play. Any habit you have should have a very low Completion Threshold. If this is the case, you will be able to increase your streak even on hard days. And believe me, these hard days will inevitably come!

Apart from creating a chain you don’t want to lose, tracking your habits will provide a log of the past. In a few weeks from now, you might look back at your track record. This will show you how much you have achieved already, and it will just continue to grow as time passes. It will also give you valuable insight as to where you are having issues and how your HabitSystem might be adjusted to better work for you.

After Tracking for a period of time, you are able to easily see your streak, just as you would see the result of the lush growth of the oak’s crown. This is especially important on those days when you lack motivation, which will happen. Having that streak growing every day and having the data available for your review every time you make an entry will not only raise your awareness, but also will help you succeed with your HabitSystem. One of the biggest benefits of Tracking is that you are able to look back and enjoy your previous successes.

Making the habit stick

The most important argument in favor of Tracking your habits—apart from the ones we have looked at—is that it will allow you to make the habit become permanent. The constant daily reinforcement will make the habit become a part of your daily life and, subsequently, your personality. Tracking your habit progress is crucial as it will lead to you actually doing your habit consistently. If you do not track, you lose sight of where you are.

It is easy to fall off the track altogether if you have no data to fall back upon. When you are tracking, you have a keen awareness of your progress, and you can learn from it as well. Going back and looking at your own progress is a very powerful tool. If you choose to go without tracking, you will be posed with a greater risk of falling off the path.

All in all, there is no reason not to track your habits. It is the most important step if you want to sustainably introduce new habits into your life. Tracking, of course, is just a tool to help you do so. However, it is the most important and most valuable tool in your arsenal. It should not be wasted.