Habit trackers are great space savers and let you see what you need to focus more (or less) on. There are so many different ways to habit track – monthly, weekly, on a separate page, within the weekly spread, bullet journal style etc.

Here are some of the ways I’ve habit tracked in the past – hopefully you find some inspiration to use with your planner!

15 Habit Tracker Ideas to Try

1. Printable Monthly Habit Tracker

One entire page in landscape format is my preferred format for habit trackers. It provides enough room to write the habits and you can see the entire month at once.

I often resize habit trackers to fit A5 page size, or resize them for my bullet journal:

Happy Notes Half Sheet Review + DIY Half Sheet Printable Inserts

2. An add on page

I use this when the weekly spread I’m using doesn’t have quite enough space. An add on page like the one below with half habit tracker and half lined writing or checklist space is my preferred option.

Week 14: Using a simple, 1 page weekly planner with only 3 sections

3. On the weekly spread

Not many planners include a habit tracker on a weekly spread which is another reason why I tend to use a printable.

Having it right there in front of you on the weekly spread is ideal when you’re creating new habits, rather than hidden away on a monthly page you may forget to refer to.

Related: Planning with a functional minimalist DIY weekly planner printable 

If printables don’t appeal to you, here are some other options:

4. In a planner

My favorite planner that includes a habit tracker while maintaining a very functional weekly spread is the Mi Goals planner.

Mi Goals Weekly Planner Review 

The Agendio Planner have the option of adding a habit tracker into each week of your planner – plus you can choose which habits you want the page to be pre-filled with, the start day of the week and I also opted to add a total column.

Related: Agendio Review (custom, personalised weekly planner) 

I’ll be doing a post with a roundup of planners that include habit trackers soon. Make sure you subscribe to be notified when that post is published.

5. Dot Grid paper

Draw a box on the days you expect those habits / routine tasks to happen, then cross off or color in the days you actually did them.

By drawing the boxes I find it easier to see where I’m over-scheduling i.e. forecasting where I was spending my time rather than crossing off the boxes after it had happened. I have more time on a Saturday and Sunday, so I tend to schedule more tasks on these days.

Boxes drawn on dot grid paper work out much neater than lined paper.

Week 33: Colorful Bullet Journal Inspired Weekly Spread

6. Highlighter border

Similar to the above outlining method, highlighters are quick, simple and effective.

Week 1: Using a daily habit/routine tracker to plan your week

7. Add a total column

If I have room on the page, I’ll add an extra column and label it T for total and tally up the number of times I did that thing during the month.

Sometimes I’ll also add a column with G and add a goal amount of times I intend to do that thing during the month.

Trialing the Sugar and Type Rule the World Planner

8. Graph Paper Sticky notes

My favorite are the Post It note 3M. I find they work best with ballpoint pens. The ink of gel pens tends to ‘feather’.

Week 28: Planning the entire week using only sticky notes

9. Planner stickers

While most planner stickers seem to be sized for the sidebar of the popular Erin Condren weekly planner (and similar size planners) most planner stickers can be used in other planners.

This one is the horizontal MAMBI planner. The water intake habit tracker is from my shop.

Week 40: Using the MAMBI Happy Planner Horizontal

10. Stamps

The Frixion self inking erasable stamps are my favorite! No mess, they last a long time and come in lots of cute images

Week 39: Weekly Planning using Studio Stationery notepad 

11. Graph Paper

Works best with feint grey lines rather than black which ends up looking busy when you write over the top of it.

I shared a tutorial on how to make your own graph paper in this post.

Read more: 12 Planner Layout Ideas for Monthly Habit Tracking in Your Bullet Journal

12. Notepads

Some notepads have habit trackers built in such as this one:

And these from Kikki K

13. Convert the notes section

… and if they don’t you have always rule up some columns and create your own habit tracker

Passion Planner has a printable template you can cut out and stick onto the page. If you don’t want it to take up the entire notes space just put a strip of washi on one side to create a ‘flap’ so you can still write on the page underneath.

Related: Passion Planner Review – Compact and Classic Sizes 

Week 36:  Using the daily and weekly Momentum Planner by Productive Flourishing

14. List Notepad

List notepads are ideal and if you want to keep it with your planner, a strip of washi will turn it into a ‘sticky note’

Weekly planning using multiple notepads (from Typo)

15. In the sidebar with stickers

The notes column in vertical planners is too narrow to write much in which is why I turn to stickers. They work well in weekly and monthly spreads.

These planner stickers are from my shop: water intake stickers and healthy routines stickers.

Week 29: Plum Paper Me Planner 

16. Every other month

There are probably things you need to do, but don’t need to do on a weekly or even monthly basis. For those type of tasks (for me quarterly, bi-annual or annual), I use my last time I did printable.

Instructions for resizing any printable, to any page size, are in this post: how to print any printable at any page size

I hope you found this post helpful. If you need some more inspiration for habit tracking, click the image below to download a list of of 100 things to put in your habit tracker.

More planning tips

• Guide to Discbound Planners & Frequently Asked Questions
• 8 Ways to use highlighters for Bullet Journal Spreads
• 50 Category Ideas for Color Coding Your Planner
• Digital habit tracking using Goodnotes versus habit tracking on paper

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