Why You Should Track Your Habits

What is Habit Tracking?  Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution only to forget about it in less than a week? We’ve been there. Healthy habits are essential for a fulfilling life but they can also be difficult to cultivate, especially if you’re more or less set in your ways. So, how can we change this? One way to do it is with habit trackers! To put it simply, habit trackers are exactly what they sound like, tools that help you keep track of your activities and habits. You could track your habits by marking them on your calendar or you could get a customised habit tracking sheet to keep a check on your progress. Tracking your habits is important because habits take time to form and having something to document your progress helps you stay on course effectively.  There are so many benefits to habit tracking, some of them are listed below.  Accountability Is your goal to exercise daily, journal everyday, or drink 7-8 glasses of water each day? All these are great habits to form but just telling yourself that you’ll start tomorrow or not being sincere about it isn’t going to help you. Instead, getting a physical habit tracker would compel you to do the action and make you accountable for your actions. Accountability is the first step towards any long-lasting change because, without it, you could end up flaking and procrastinating.  Forming Good Habits and Discarding the Bad Ones  The more you practice keeping a track of your habits, the better results you’re going to get. Some believe a good habit takes 21 days, some believe it takes 60 days. Regardless of the time, the only constant is consistent effort. The time it takes for you to form a habit may depend on the kind of habit you’re trying to form but as long as you remain consistent, you’re bound to hit your goal. The great thing about farming good habits is you automatically shed the bad ones. For example, say you want to start waking up early; you set your alarm for 6 a.m., and when that alarm rings, you make yourself leave your bed to go mark it on your tracker. That’s progress. In time, not only will you start waking up early, you’ll also go to bed earlier than usual because your body needs that rest. By building one good habit, you probably lose several other not-so-good ones.  Visual Representations of Your Progress By maintaining a habit tracker, you’re constantly viewing your progress and this visual cue can be immensely rewarding. There’s something deeply satisfying about viewing and measuring your progress and here’s an example of it: Imagine you’re assembling a jigsaw puzzle. At first, it’s all chaotic. There’s no order when you first start, and it can feel quite overwhelming. But then you try to figure it out and you slowly start placing one piece after another, and now suddenly, there’s some clarity, enough for you to want to keep going. This motivates you to put some more pieces in their places, and before you know it, you’ve finished the puzzle! Think about this for a moment. How rewarding is that feeling? Habit trackers pretty much do the same for you.  Building Confidence and Motivation As we discussed in the previous point, a visual representation of your progress can greatly motivate you. That in turn makes you more consistent and the more consistent you are, the much closer you get to your goal. This builds confidence and motivation in an individual. For example, say your goal is to be able to do a push-up. You might struggle in the first week, but with consistent effort, you’ll finally be able to do a push-up. Then that push-up becomes two push-ups. The two become five. A month into it, you’re probably doing 25 push-ups for a warm-up! What started at 0 is now at 25 because you felt confident and motivated enough. Improving the Quality of Life  Cultivating and maintaining good habits are incredibly rewarding simply because it makes you the best version of yourself! By maintaining your healthy habits, you’re improving the quality of your life. And the best part is this: you can start anytime! There’s never a deadline for starting something new and awesome. You’re never too old to discard habits that do not improve your life. There are so many healthy habits we could include in our lives. You could try to make a habit of going to bed early, drinking more water, getting enough sunlight, and meeting your deadlines. The possibilities are truly endless!  Conclusion Tracking your habits will help you become a better version of yourself and the process is as simple as just downloading one of our free, printable trackers and making sure you practice your habits daily.  We have an entire collection of trackers. Habit trackers, monthly trackers, colourful trackers, black and white trackers, 100-day trackers, and more. Browse through our site and print your favourite tracker today!  Check out some of our free, printable trackers here: http://theprintables.in/savings-tracker-bw/ http://theprintables.in/monthly-budget-tracker-color/ https://theprintables.in/multiple-habit-tracker/ https://theprintables.in/monthly-habit-tracker-b-w/ https://theprintables.in/monthly-habit-tracker-2/ https://theprintables.in/weekly-habit-tracker-b-w/ https://theprintables.in/habit-tracker/