Habit tracker

I always found the idea of a ‘wellness journal’ or ‘habit tracker’ a bit prescriptive. The idea of filling in specific sections every single day seemed time-consuming and slightly impersonal. When I came across the idea of a bullet journal, I loved it. I use a standard diary for planning and ‘to-do’ sections (my journal is a stress-free zone!) but decided to create a section in my journal to track my habits, from sleep and activity to mood and self-care. The aim of my journal has always been to get to know myself better and I realised that my actions and habits are a big part of this, not just my thoughts & feelings.

The great thing about drawing it up yourself is that you can make it as detailed or simple as you like. I use a tick list for habits and leave space for reflections, such as what went well or what I can do tomorrow to make sure I do something I missed today. Then if I feel like journaling that evening, I use full pages for that.

The benefits of creating your own journal are that you can add whatever sections you like. Make it unique to you. It’s your own personal book, for you and nobody else. It’s a record of how you felt, what you did, what you wanted at different points in time. You can record thoughts, feelings, goals, progress, plans, anything you like.

Through tracking your habits, you can get honest with yourself – what are you actually doing and what are you skipping? Why? Often we avoid doing what is best for us, but real self-care is self-discipline. When we understand that doing all those little things we don’t feel like doing isn’t some form of punishment, but self-respect, then we can reframe self-discipline in our mind.

To give you some ideas, this is a break-down of how I created mine.

Habit tracker break-down

I like the journals with dotted pages as you have a bit more freedom than with lines, but choose which you prefer. (Papier.com has an absolutely gorgeous range with lined, dotted and plain pages. Every notebook is customisable at no extra cost. I’m obsessed.)

Take a set period of time, such as a week or two-week period, and write M, T, W, T, F, S, S across the top or the dates.

Down the left-hand side I have a list of the habits I aim to do every single day. This starts with a morning routine, down to an evening routine. A few ideas are:

• Meditate
• Mantra for the day
• Stretch/movement

• x amount water
• Movement

• No snacks after x pm
• Leave phone downstairs
• Room by x pm
• Self-care
• Journal
• Read

The list can be as long or short as you like. At the end of each day, take a moment to check off what you did. If there are certain habits you keep missing out but really want to adopt, have a think about how you can make them easier for yourself. For example, if it’s drinking more water, having a big 1l bottle by your desk makes this a lot easier.

For some of them, I add detail instead of a tick. For example, the amount of water I drank, the steps I did or the actual time I went up to my room.

Underneath your habit tracker, you can add a range of sections. You could have a whole section for food or a separate tracker. You could add a section for sleep (e.g. hours slept or how many times woken), movement (e.g. type of activity, daily steps), self-care (e.g. self-care activities that make you feel good or reduce anxiety) and reflections.

It’s completely up to you, so have fun with it and enjoy the process! Even if you don’t do the checklist every day (some days the last thing you feel like doing is a checklist when you’re shattered) or decide not to continue tracking them, you’ll still be more conscious of what you’re doing.