How it works
Each habit gets a calendar page. Tap a day you did it and a red X goes on that square. Marks on days next to each other are joined by a line: the chain. The idea comes from Brad Isaac's account of advice he credited to Jerry Seinfeld (a wall calendar, a red marker, an X a day); Seinfeld has since said it wasn't his.
Rest days you plan, like weekends, carry the chain without adding to it, and so does a day you mark as rest when you're ill. A day that's just missed ends the chain. Today never does: until it's marked, the chain counts to yesterday. "Three times a week" habits count weeks that reach the target instead of days.
Next to the chain, the calendar shows how many of your planned days you did in the last 30. That number is kinder, and closer to the research: in a study at UCL, people took from 18 to 254 days to make a habit automatic, and missing an occasional day didn't materially set them back. Research on logged streaks also found that broken streaks discourage people most when they blame themselves.
Everything is saved only on this device.
Questions people ask
- What does "don't break the chain" mean?
- Mark every day you do the thing, so the marks form an unbroken chain you don't want to break. Brad Isaac described it as advice from Jerry Seinfeld: a wall calendar, a big red marker, an X for each day of work, and "Your only job is to not break the chain." Seinfeld has since said the idea wasn't his.
- Will a rest day break my chain?
- No: a rest day you plan (say, every Sunday), or a day you mark as rest when you're ill, keeps the chain going. Rest days don't add to the chain's length, so it still counts the days you did the thing.
- How does "three times a week" count?
- By weeks: a week counts once it has three marks, and the chain is the number of weeks in a row that reached the target. The week in progress never breaks it.
- What if I miss a day?
- The chain starts again from the next X, and your longest chain stays on record, as does "done on 21 of the last 24 planned days". In a UCL study of habit forming, the time to reach automaticity varied from 18 to 254 days, and missing an occasional day didn't materially set people back.
- Is there a limit on habits?
- Thirty at once, archived ones kept besides, and no paywall. Everything is saved only in this browser on this device; export a backup or a CSV from Settings.