Tracking habits: To do or dedicated app?

I’m looking at starting to track habits such as eat healthy and get exercise but I’m wondering if it’s better to use an app such as Streaks or just put it into my to do list, which in my case is Things.

Any thoughts? I’m leaning towards using streaks so not to clutter my to do.

I just started doing the same, and I went for Streaks instead of adding it to my Omnifocus, mostly for the reason you mention but also because these dedicated Apps typically have functionality to get some simple statistics for tracking them.

I also like the little widget for Streaks, both on the Apple Watch and iPhone.

1 Like

Thanks for commenting.

1 Like

Strides is also nice for tracking good (and bad…) habits (on iPhone/iPad/Web).

(I was using it before they went into an optional subscription model; so I’m grandfathered into their Plus plan)

2 Likes

I find a habit tracker can be great complement to a task manager. They’re useful for getting specific activities to a place where they’re performed without any prompting (e.g. flossing teeth, journalling, reading what’s been added to Instapaper).

Doing something consistently for 40 days is typically long enough to instil a new habit in my experience.

I’ve spent time with most of the popular habit tracking apps, and my tool of choice is Streaks. I like its balance between simplicity and functionality. It integrates with Health Kit and has great AppleWatch support, including the ability to add a complication that shows which activities have been completed.

2 Likes

I have used streaks for a while, it’s good. But now I’m looking at using Productive just for a change.

1 Like

I put “tasks” Into Things appropriately tagged. When i want to see how I’m doing I filter by tag. Combined with recurring settings it works. I use the recurring setting — repeat after completing the task If I want intermittent reinforcement .

Not doubting there are elegant and useful purpose made apps .

Todoist has a search capability that outshines Things for finding and sorting tags. They again…

1 Like

For those concerned that Streaks doesn’t have an iPad app… They currently have a iPad version in TestFlight.

1 Like

I’ve been using calendar for this.

I have an IFFFT geofence that creates a google calendar event when I arrive at the gym. I have a workflow that let’s me create a named event in the same calendar for other exercise activities. You can use the week or month view to see all the exercise activities quickly.

I’ve been using Habitify (iOS) for this, and I’m really liking it.

I currently have two daily OF tasks, one for my bible-in-a-year plan, and one logging my sleep via a workflow (less of a priority since I started using the sleep cycle app). Anything else (Day One journaling, etc.) I don’t want to keep in OF because then if I skip a day it’s breaking down my GTD flow. I believe Kourosh Dini wrote about this problem.

I’m looking for a habit-tracking app, but I’m torn. Streaks looks the best to me, but I’d want to be able to access it on the Mac. I’m not sure if Habitify is worth that much more money than Streaks for that one feature when it’s otherwise less enticing overall at a glance. I checked The Sweet Setup’s review for this and their recommendation is Productivity :sleepy:

I’ve been using streaks for the last few days, seems ok so far. Going to give it a month then I’ll report back in.

1 Like

i use strides i like the web interface alot bc sometimes i need to use my phone to input data into the app

and i play Habitica (formally HABIT RPG) we have a GTD party if anyone is a fan of gamification

1 Like