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Create Your Own Habit Tracker in Notion

Create Your Own Habit Tracker in Notion

You’ve stumbled upon the right place if you’re looking to give your habits a digital home. Let’s talk about why you should consider a “Notion Habit Tracker”.

First things first, why should you track your habits? Well, it’s simple. Tracking habits is like having a personal coach who’s always there, nudging you towards your goals. It’s a gentle reminder that you’re on a journey, and every step counts. Plus, it’s incredibly satisfying to see your progress over time.

Now, let’s talk about Notion. Imagine a digital workspace that’s as flexible as playdough, as organized as a librarian, and as accessible as your local coffee shop. That’s Notion for you! It’s a platform where you can write, plan, collaborate, and get organized. It’s your all-in-one workspace where you can take notes, manage tasks, set goals, and more.

So, why combine habit tracking with Notion? Because it’s like peanut butter and jelly, a match made in heaven! With Notion, you can customize your habit tracker to your heart’s content. Want to track your water intake, exercise routine, or reading habits? No problem! Notion’s got you covered. Plus, having your habit tracker in Notion means you have all your productivity tools in one place.

Table of contents

So, are you ready to become a master of your habits with a Notion Habit Tracker? Stay tuned, because we’re just getting started! But first:

A quick alternative: Habit tracker apps

While a Notion Habit Tracker is a powerful tool, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Let’s spill the beans on why it might not be your perfect match.

Firstly, managing a Habit Tracker on Notion can be tricky. It’s not just about ticking off boxes; it’s about setting it up, maintaining it, and making sure it serves your needs. And if you’re not tech-savvy, it can feel like trying to solve a puzzle in the dark.

Secondly, creating graphs in Notion can be really challenging. It’s not built for data visualization, so if you’re a fan of colorful graphs and charts, you might find yourself in a pickle.

Thirdly, dealing with data, sync, and backups in Notion can be frustrating. If you’re not careful, you might end up with lost data or sync issues, which is about as fun as stepping on a Lego.

And, as I said earlier, Notion is an all-in-one workspace, which means it can be overwhelming.

But don’t worry, there’s a silver lining. If you’re looking for a user-friendly alternative, the Habituator habit tracker app on iOS is your knight in shining armor. It’s designed specifically for habit tracking, so it’s as easy to use as a light switch. Plus, it takes care of the graphs, data, and backups, so you can focus on what really matters - your habits. So, before continuing, why not give Habituator a whirl? You might just find it’s the perfect fit for you!

Notion Habit Tracker Template: An Easy Start

So, you want to track your habits using Notion, which is great, but you have no clue where to start? That’s where Notion Templates come in handy!

But first, what’s a template in Notion? Think of it as a pre-designed layout, a blueprint if you will, that you can use to quickly set up your pages. It’s like having a personal assistant who’s done all the groundwork for you. All you need to do is fill in your details, and voila, you’re good to go!

The beauty of templates lies in their simplicity and efficiency. They save you time, reduce the learning curve, and help you maintain consistency across your pages. Plus, they’re fully customizable, so you can tweak them to suit your style and needs.

Now, let’s talk about the benefits of using a template for creating a habit tracker on Notion. Firstly, it takes the guesswork out of the equation. You don’t have to start from scratch or figure out how to structure your tracker. The template provides a tried-and-tested structure that you can rely on.

Secondly, it ensures you’re not missing out on any key features. For example, a Notion Habit Tracker Template may come with all the essential elements of a robust habit tracker, including daily, weekly, and monthly tracking, habit categories, progress indicators, and more.

Lastly, it allows you to focus on what matters most - your habits. With the template, you can spend less time setting up and more time tracking your habits, reflecting on your progress, and making meaningful changes.

Intrigued?

There are many habit tracker templates to use with Notion. We reviewed some of the most used ones just for you so you can pick the one that better suits your needs.

Notion’s official Habit Tracker

https://www.notion.so/templates/habit-tracker-buttons

This simple habit tracker allows you to check in on your daily habits. It consists of a simple database with one habit per column and a card template that allows you to fill in the data for any specific day. To get started, you only need to clean up all the test data, open the “Streaks” view, and add your habits as columns.

It is a very simple one with some limited automation, so getting started is rather easy.

Downsides? Many: for one, it gets out of hand quickly if you have many habits to track. Also, automation buttons just mark a habit done for every day, which is just a weird choice / bug and shows a limitation of Notion: buttons cannot execute even simple logic flows, like IF / ELSE statements. Sorry for the IT jargon, this only means you won’t be able to really mark your habits done with a single tap and you’ll have to mess around with cards and templates every day.

Two more big downsides in our opinion are the fact that habits are just ON/OFF and that there’s no data visualization at all. This means no charts, no yearly view, no trends. Drawing charts in Notion is just not easy, you would need to leverage some very techy integrations with some external library or service, some of which may even come with some price tag attached.

For a basic and free habit tracker, this would work. If you’re looking for something more easy, convenient, or powerful, you may have to look somewhere else.

Health & habit tracker by Jane Schill

https://www.notion.so/templates/health-and-habit-tracker

By far, one of the most creative and complete Notion Habit Tracker Templates available on the templates store. It features a big database with habits, moods, symptoms, and medications and is tailored for monitoring one’s overall well-being. It provides stats on your completions, has many well-organized views, and can, of course, be personalized at will.

Being so complete, there’s also the other side of the coin: it is also rather complex! It uses custom, creative formulas to display progress, for example, and messing with those properties can result in disaster rather easily. It also needs some time to explore and understand the different views and quite a few caveats and details that may get you in trouble when editing the templates.

It’s a cool one, not for everyone, but it can definitely step up your habit tracker game compared with the other options on this list.

Habit Tracker by Josh

https://www.notion.so/templates/habit-tracker-24

Another popular option on the Notion templates store, this Notion Habit Tracker Template is probably the best one we tried so far. It includes buttons that work to complete today’s habits (provided that you create a card for Today beforehand), well-designed views, and has some innovative sections like a habit journal for personal reflections, a Milestones area where you can celebrate your progress, and finally a rewards section, just great to harvest all the motivation you may need.

This one is by far our favorite. It does not compare to a full-blown habit tracker app, it cannot, but it is probably the best habit tracker notion template you will find on the internet and is free. Thanks, Josh for creating this gem.

So far so good with templates, they’re a great way to get started but let’s be honest: if you just want to have a great habit tracker in your pocket, with stats, convenient features, and so on, you should probably opt for a native habit tracker app, like Habituator above. The real advantage of using Notion is that you can customize your habit tracker and integrate it into your own dashboards and processes. So a new question needs an answer.

How to Create a Habit Tracker in Notion?

We won’t delve into the intricacies of managing Notion in this guide. If you’re not already proficient, you might want to seek a beginner’s guide elsewhere. However, if you’re an intermediate user, you might find it useful to understand how to create a complex personal system. Jeff Su provides excellent guidance on getting started with databases and views, the building blocks of any advanced Notion notebook or template. If you’re unsure what I’m referring to, consider watching Jeff’s video or downloading an app or switching to a different tool for your habit tracker. Notion might not be the right fit for you!

But if you’re familiar with Notion and know how to use it, how can you create an effective Habit Tracker?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. You might want something very complex and advanced or something basic, just to remind yourself to complete certain tasks every day. Either way, here are some core considerations.

Creating a Habit Tracker Database in Notion

At the heart of your Notion habit tracker, you’ll need to create a simple database. Our recommended structure would be:

  • One column for the Date, defaulting to Today;
  • One column for each habit, represented as a checkbox.

This simple data structure is a good starting point, and you can enhance it by adding computed properties (day of the week, daily progress, notes…) and building various views.

Essential Views for Your Habit Tracker in Notion

You’ll be ticking off your habits one at a time each day. That’s the primary use case for a habit tracker, so you’ll need a Today View. This view displays what you need to do today and allows you to take action. Integrating this into your personal Notion agenda could be a great idea, keeping it always visible.

Depending on how you organize your days, you might find a weekly or monthly view convenient. These could be replaced by a calendar view, displaying all your habits in a fully interactive calendar. However, this solution can take up quite a bit of space and might not make sense to integrate into your main calendar: things can get crowded and messy very quickly! Instead, consider linking your weekly view, habit calendar view, or any stats page you create from your personal agenda or main Notion page. This way, you have easy access to this data without cluttering your workspace.

As for stats, what should you track? It really depends on you! You might just want to track total completions or daily/weekly progress percentages, which are easy to add with formulas to your database or, even better, to a separate view. Be aware that adding charts can be challenging or costly in Notion. If you need them, you might want to consider a different tool, like a habit tracker app or website.

Conclusion

In conclusion, habit tracking is a powerful method for fostering positive change in our lives. While the Notion Habit Tracker provides a flexible and customizable platform for this purpose, it might not be the best fit for everyone due to its complexity and lack of data visualization. However, with the aid of a Notion Habit Tracker Template, setting up your habit tracker in Notion can be straightforward. For those seeking a more user-friendly alternative, the Habituator app on iOS is an excellent option. Ultimately, the tool you choose should meet your needs and help you achieve your goals.

Happy habit tracking!