Templates
Habit tracker template
This habit tracker template is a free printable page for one week. Each habit gets a row, each day gets a box, and you write a tick or the minutes the habit really got. At the end of the week, count the days you met the goal.
Last updated
Reviewed by Mohammed Raqeeb
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The habit tracker template.
The habit tracker template is one US Letter page for one week, Sunday to Saturday, with room for twelve habits. The page has four parts:
- A row for each habit and its daily goal: for example, read for twenty minutes.
- A box for each day: a tick, or the minutes the habit got.
- Days done: how many days met the goal.
- Below the rows, notes for next week: what to change.
How to use it
How to use a habit tracker.
A habit tracker works when each goal is clear enough to check at the end of the day. “Read more” cannot be ticked, because any amount counts as more. “Read for twenty minutes” can. Write the goal in the second column, then fill in one box each night.
Writing the minutes instead of a tick takes an extra second, and it is worth it. A habit that got a few minutes on a hard day still shows up as a start, and over a week the numbers show which days tend to go wrong. For habits that limit something, like phone time, write the goal as an upper limit, such as an hour or less.
Filled in
A habit tracker, filled in from a real week.
Here is the tracker filled in for one week, with three habits: moving, reading and keeping the phone down. Nobody ticked anything by hand. The minutes come from seven real daily entries, read by the parser in Think in Numbers, the part of the app that reads plain words and adds up the hours. A day is marked done when its minutes met the goal.
Move
30 min or more a day, counted from Fitness
5of 7 days done
- Sun60✓
- Mon45✓
- Tuenone✗
- Wed45✓
- Thunone✗
- Fri45✓
- Sat210✓
Read
20 min or more a day, counted from Self-Growth
4of 7 days done
- Sun40✓
- Monnone✗
- Tue30✓
- Wed20✓
- Thunone✗
- Frinone✗
- Sat60✓
Phone
60 min or less a day, counted from Using Phone
3of 7 days done
- Sun120✗
- Mon150✗
- Tue90✗
- Wednone✓
- Thu180✗
- Fri60✓
- Satnone✓
Minutes per day, from the app’s starter categories: Move counts Fitness, Read counts Self-Growth, and Phone counts Using Phone. The goals were set for this example.
“None” means that day’s entry never mentioned the habit. For the phone, that counts as within the limit, which is generous: an entry that leaves the phone out is not proof it stayed in a pocket.
Real output from the part of Think in Numbers that reads your words and adds up the hours (version v21), run on with the app’s starter categories. Stored exactly as it came out, not edited.
Reading the week
What the filled-in week shows.
Read the rows one at a time. Move met its goal on five days, and each of them had a set time for it in the entry: the gym before work on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, a long run on Sunday and a hike on Saturday. The two misses were Tuesday, when the gym was skipped, and Thursday, the long launch day.
The phone row tells the most. It went over the limit on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and each of those evenings had a long stretch on the phone after dinner. It stayed within the limit on the evenings with plans: dinner with a friend on Wednesday, drinks with the team on Friday, and a movie night on Saturday. Reading missed on Monday, Thursday and Friday, the same evenings that went to the phone or to the team.
The same week, planned day by day, is on the weekly planner template. For a page that keeps the day in words and hours, use the daily journal template. A habit is easier to keep when the morning already says when it will happen, and the morning prompts help with that.
Without paper
Habits and hours in one app.
The week above was never ticked by hand. Every box came from a few plain lines about the day, and that is the part paper cannot do.
On paper, every box is filled in by hand each night, and a tick cannot show what took a habit’s time on the days it was missed.
A no-paper version of this tracker should count a habit from the day you actually had. You write or say what happened, the minutes land in the right row, and a missed day shows what filled the time instead. Most journaling apps note how the day felt and leave the hours out, so a habit’s minutes have nowhere to come from.
One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in.
You write or say your day in your own words, as it happens or all at once. The app reads what you wrote and counts the hours that went to each part of it: exercise, reading, your phone, and whatever took their time instead, and the time you never mentioned (shown as unaccounted). Then it shows those hours over days and weeks. It also has habits with how often, reminders and streaks.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.
Keep reading.
- TemplatesPrintable PDFs: a daily journal, an hourly planner and a time log.
- Weekly planner templateSeven days, Sunday first: the plan, what happened, and the week's hours.
- Daily journal templateOne page: the day in your words, then where the hours went.
- Morning promptsPrompts for the start of the day, from last night's sleep to the first hour.
- Where did my week go? calculatorEnter a typical day and see your week accounted and unaccounted.
- Time journalingThe method: write or say your day in your own words, then see it as hours.
Questions
Questions people ask.
How do I use a habit tracker template?
Write each habit and its daily goal in a row. Each night, tick the box or write the minutes the habit got that day. At the end of the week, count the days you met the goal and write it under Days done.
Why write minutes instead of a tick?
Minutes show how close you came. A tick for a five-minute walk and a tick for an hour look the same on the page. Over a few weeks, minutes also show whether a habit is growing or shrinking.
How many habits should I track at once?
Start with a few. The template has twelve rows, but a short list you keep filling in is worth more than a long one you give up on in the second week.
Is this habit tracker template free?
Yes. The habit tracker is a free one-page PDF for one week. Print a copy for each week.
Is there an app that fills in the minutes for me?
Yes. On paper, every box is yours to fill in each night. Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in, for iPhone and Android, reads what you write or say about your day and adds up the hours by category. The minutes behind a habit are there without a stopwatch. It also has habits with how often, reminders and streaks.
Try it on my day.
Write today down in your own words, and see where the hours went.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.