Habits to track when you don't know where to start

The best habits to track are small, daily, and easy to answer with a yes or no: drank water, walked 20 minutes, read 10 pages, phone out of the bedroom. Start with three, not ten. Track each one right after you do it, and write down a smaller version for bad days.

Below are 50 habits to track, grouped by life area, a quick way to pick your first three, and a free printable monthly habit tracker.

A habit tracker doesn't build the habit. It shows you the truth about it.

That's useful only if the page stays honest. Track too many things and you stop filling it in. Track vague things ("be healthier") and you can't tell if you did them. So the list below is built for tracking: every habit is specific, and every one comes with a minimum version.

The minimum version is what counts on a bad day. It keeps the streak alive and the habit in place, even when the full version isn't happening.

Track the days you didn't do it. A tick means a clean day.

That's 50. Don't track all of them. Pick three.

Start with three. Add a fourth only after a month where you filled in most days.

Three is enough to change a month, and few enough to fill in every night in under a minute. More rows usually mean more empty boxes, and empty boxes make it easy to quit the whole tracker.

To pick your three, use one from each group:

If you've written resolutions for next year, take the weekly action from your first one as habit number two. The 2027 resolution ideas and worksheet has a list.

Right-click (or long-press) the image to save it, then print it on US Letter or A4 and choose "fit to page".

One page, one month. Six rows, so you have room for three habits now and a few more later. Each row has space for the habit and its minimum version, then 31 boxes.

How to use it:

Prefer an app or a notebook? The same rules work anywhere: three habits, a minimum version, tick right after. In a notebook, the tracker is one of the first pages in these bullet journal ideas. And if journaling is one of your three, here's how to start a journal with three lines a night.

A month on paper shows you which habits stick. Running them for a whole season is the harder part, and that's where The Execution Bundle helps: both NoFluffWisdom books together. The 90-Day Discipline Blueprint builds habits in order, one main habit in weeks 1-2, a second in weeks 3-4, a third in weeks 7-8, with its own printable 90-Day Tracker and a Restart Plan. 7 Steps to Change Your Life covers seven habits worth building first, with a daily tracker. 25% off with code 25off.

Here's a hypothetical month for someone tracking three habits:

That isn't a perfect month. It's a useful one.

The bed is automatic now, so next month it can come off the tracker. The workout happened 20 days out of 30, counting the minimum days, which is a lot more than "I never work out." And the phone row shows a real problem: 10 nights in bed with the phone. That's next month's focus.

Do the minimum version the next day. That's the whole rule.

One empty box is normal. Two in a row is where habits slip away, so the day after a miss, the only goal is a tick, even a small one. The longer version of this is never miss twice.

Don't fill in boxes you missed, and don't start a fresh page because one week went badly. The gaps are information. They show you which days, or which weeks, keep breaking the habit. If whole weeks are empty because you're running on empty, the habit isn't the problem; start with how to recover from burnout.

What should I track in a habit tracker?
Daily habits you can answer with yes or no: water, a walk, reading, bedtime, phone out of the bedroom. Avoid vague ones like "be healthy". If you can't tell whether you did it, you can't track it.

What are the best habits to track for beginners?
Pick one you already mostly do (make the bed), one you're building (a 10-minute walk), and one you're stopping (no phone in bed). Three is enough.

How long does it take to form a habit?
It varies a lot. A University College London study (Lally and colleagues, 2010) found that a new daily behavior took a median of 66 days to become automatic, with a range of 18 to 254 days depending on the person and the habit. Plan to track for at least two months.

Is it better to track habits on paper or in an app?
Whichever you'll open every day. Paper is visible on a fridge or desk, which helps. An app is always with you. A printed tracker is a good place to start because it's free and has no notifications to ignore.

Should I track habits on weekends?
Track the habits you want every day, including weekends. For weekday-only habits, cross out the weekend boxes at the start of the month so they don't look like misses.

Three ticks a night is how habits start. If you want the 90-day plan for making them stick, both books are in one bundle. 25% off with code 25off.

Right now, in under 10 minutes: pick your three habits from the list, write each one's minimum version, and print the tracker for the rest of this month.