Get Productive
Digital Habit Tracking
I can’t begin to stress how much better my life — both professional and personal — improved once I got a task management system in place. You don’t quite appreciate how many things you need to remember to do until you start putting all the minutiae down in a long list, all the subtasks for bigger projects, and anything else that gnaws are you to remember. You gotta put that somewhere, not only to get it out of your head but also so you can track and see how well you’re doing with various aspects of your life.
And it wasn’t just tasks like paying bills or remembering to take the trash out, or running a report at work every Monday — I added in other tasks that were more habits for my life that I needed to remember better. Things like doing my Morning Pages, or going to the gym, or anything else that your busy life makes it hard to remember but you deem important. How can you start to fit it into your system? How can you track your habits?
We’ve all seen the pretty Bullet Journal spreads or printables that help you track your water intake or show how often you work out. But if my life is anything like yours, my phone is the central hub. If I don’t have it on my phone, it’s not likely to get done or be remembered. So what to do?
- Make it a calendar block
Habit trackers can work in conjunction with your task management system, working in it or adjacent. I found that when I created a fitness goal in my Google Calendar, I’m more motivated to keep up with it than when I simply put it in my task manager. For whatever reason, psychologically or otherwise, having a set and blocked time for doing fitness/movement helped me to create that habit. Now I feel off if I don’t achieve my daily fitness goal, and when making future plans I have it already scheduled in so I know I need to factor in that time with my plans.
Maybe that doesn’t quite work with your system. Maybe you need to go a week or a month at a time and schedule it the habits you want to develop that way. But you can still open up your calendar when you’re planning out your week or month and fit in to your schedule when you will achieve your habits.
- Use a specialized app
I’ve tried special apps like Habit Tracker and Productive that can help guide you with developing the habits you want, which are especially good for remembering to brush your teeth, eat balanced meals, or take time for meditation. Personally, they didn’t work for me, but I can see how they could work for someone else who made really need an app to send regular notifications, or need a few very specific task reminders, or only need the app for a morning or evening routine and not throughout the day. Try out a few and see what makes sense to you and your system. Water Minder is what I use to remind me to stay hydrated and track my water intake. I like having push notifications just for that one habit!
- Add it to your task manager
Maybe the habit you’re trying to improve on or remember is something not necessarily specific to a certain time of day but has a little more flexibility — do the easy thing and add it to your to-do list. Personally, I use Todoist, but TickTick and Google Tasks and so many others can function for you just as well. I can set a task as reoccurring every day, every week day, every week, or on certain days of the month. This has been especially helpful for tasks that I need to complete at work on a monthly or quarterly basis — my task manager can remember for me. I like to do my Readwise Daily Review, but the emails didn’t work for me. So I added it as a daily task. I put bill payments in my task manager. Anything, big or small, that I need to remember to do for one thing or another gets added in.
- Make Alexa do it
I don’t make as much use of our Alexa as my spouse does, but sometimes you just need to say, “Alexa, remind me to call Mom at 7pm.” Maybe you’re working on a project and it’s not as convenient to pick up your phone, or you won’t have your phone with you but the Alexa can remind you wherever you are in the house. I find this is better for quick things that are happening the same day, but make the technology work for you in whatever way you need.
There are so many tools out there that can help you with your tasks and create new habits — make the technology work for you!
