Bullet Journal 2.0: Habit Trackers

May 17, 2017

Welcome to my not so new series, Bullet Journal 2.0. In this series, I’ll be discussing a number of topics, including what a bullet journal is, future logs, monthly spreads, weeklies vs. dailies, habit tracking (hey, you’re on this post), collections, getting over the fear of starting, what to do before you get started, FAQs, and a final wrap-up with my top tips and pointers. If you were counting, that was 10 topics. One topic a week for ten weeks! I dug myself a deep hole here, but with your support, I’ll pull through.

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Welcome back to the 6th installment of the Bullet Journal 2.0 blog series!

This week is all about habit trackers. I’ll be explaining the importance of this tool, show you some incredibly efficient examples, give you some ideas of what you can track, and direct you to some sweet free printable. I promise, you won’t be disappointed.

Habit Trackers and Their Importance

Habit tracking is a general term used to describe the task of keeping yourself accountable for tasks or goals each day throughout the week or month. These tasks and goals are completely personal to your overall goals and priorities. You don’t need to include anything that’s irrelevant to your life just because someone else is tracking it.

From my own personal experience, using a habit tracker greatly increases my productivity. Knowing that I should be filling in those little boxes at the end of the day is a great motivator. For example, if I see I have three open spaces in my workout tracker, I am much more motivated to workout knowing I’ll get to fill in that box.

Another noteworthy reason to use habit tracking in your bullet journal is it can help you see patterns. These may be patterns between your productivity and your sleep pattern. After a few months, you can analyze your trackers to average how many days you worked out each week. This may help you understand your weight loss, gain, or lack of either. These are just a few examples. You can make correlations between many things.

Habit Tracker Setup

With the popularity of bullet journaling continually growing on social media, there’s always plenty of inspiration for setups. Choose one that appeals to you, and if you find that it doesn’t work for you after a month, try a different layout.

Some of these examples are better suited for fewer items you are tracking. Others allow multitudes of room if you have a lot of things you want to track.

Some of the supplies I highly recommend for creating habit trackers are a ruler, a protractor and compass, and Staedtler Triplus Fineliners. There are lots of straight edges [and angles depending on the tracker you choose], so I do consider these items necessary. Any old ruler will do. The Staedtlers are great for color coding your tracker. They have a small enough nib to get precise in the small boxes and have a variety of color options. A dot grid journal, like the Leuctturm1917 is also handy because it allows you to easily make all of your little boxes the same size.

I think Micah has some of the most stunning habit trackers on Instagram. I first found her account through Pinterest, and I had to follow her. She tracks a multitude of items and manages to fit them all on one page in a horizontal layout. This was the first layout I ever used and it worked very well for me for a long time.

 

This is my latest habit tracker for May. I drew inspiration from @mylifeinabullet. I like this layout and plan to stick with it for awhile because I prefer the vertical layout to the horizontal layout. It’s just an aesthetic thing for me. But, I also love the little icons that indicate what I’m tracking. You could certainly add more columns to this tracker to include more items.

 

This is another alternative. I warn you that these take a bit more time to draw up. But, they are 100% customizable and definitely have more of a fun feel than the standard columns and rows. I used a mini habit trackers in my April Setup, and while I loved the look of them, they didn’t work as well for me in terms of efficiency.

 

 

This stunning design was created by Kim at Tiny Ray of Sunshine. It’s called the Intention Wheel. This is a fabulous tracker that can be added to your monthly pages. However, this is not the tracker for you if you plan to track lots of items.

 

What to Track

As I said, this is totally up to you. Everyone’s goals and priorities will vary. I suggest you look through this list, note any that appeal to you, and then decide which are worth keeping. While I’m a bit bias, I do think it’s better to stick to fewer items. I tried tracking all kinds of things and found myself forgetting if I had done them. Then I was just marking off boxes without being certain. This completely defeats the purpose.

Things You Can Add to Your Habit Tracker

• Water consumption
• Exercise
• 8+ hours of sleep
• Laundry
• Study time
• Reading
• Affirmations
• Bible Study
• Miracle Morning
• Morning pages
• 10,000+ steps [if you use a Fitbit or Apple Watch]
• Creative time
• Self-care
• Using MFP or another calorie tracking app
• Eating healthily
• No sweets
• No soda
• Intimacy
• Running/Cardio
• Strength training
• Cleaning house
• Hygiene (shower, brush teeth, brush hair, etc.)
• No spending
• Reaching out to friend/family
• Journaling
• Watering plants
• Cooking dinner
• Skincare routine
• Putting on makeup
• Personal development

What do you track in your bullet journal? Let me know in the comments to give others some fresh ideas. The sky’s the limit when it comes to what you can track. Be sure to make it meaningful to you. If fitness isn’t your priority, don’t worry about adding it. Only add things you will actually use and do, so you don’t become disappointed and give up on the idea of tracking habits altogether.

 

Free Printable Habit Trackers

Sometimes the idea of drawing out habit trackers and layouts can get overwhelming. Still, you want your journal to look nice and to give you the accountability habit trackers offer. Well, you’re in the right place! If you sign up for my mailing list, you’ll get access to my free VIP Resource Library. Currently, there are a few different printable habit trackers in their, including mini circular habit trackers and horizontal layouts.

 

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Other Posts in the Series:

[ Part 1: WTF is a Bullet Journal]

[Part 2: Before You Get Started]

[Part 3: The Future Log]

[Part 4: The Monthly Log]

[Part 5: Weekly Logs vs. Dailies]

[Part 6: You Are Here]

[Part 7: Collections]

[Part 8: Getting Over the Fear of Starting]

[Part 9: FAQs]

[Part 10: Wrap Up & Final Tips]

If you want to be notified when the next post in the series, Habit Trackers, goes live, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter. You also get access to my VIP Library when you join!

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