We're going to need a better habit tracker

How do we change the habits we're not even aware we have?

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You Think Too Much

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Over the weekend, I downloaded a habit tracker app, one of those ideas I’ve been playing with for a while without ever committing. I love the idea of tracking habits—of seeing a grid, preferably with bright colors and a streak that fills out the whole month-worth of squares. I understand enough about myself to know that this is highly motivating. Probably, it’s not just me. The gamification of society plays on that need—not to let whatever streak you’re working on end, whether it’s days doing Duolingo or playing Candy Crush.

I hesitated to use a habit tracker on my phone for several reasons. First, I hate the idea of my phone or any electronic device bossing me around. I had one of those fancy fitness bracelet things a few years ago. It buzzed at me when I’d been sitting too long. Buzzed at me to get my steps in. Buzzed at me when I was supposed to go to bed. After a while I started to wonder who was in charge of my life—me or the bracelet?

Ooh, maybe this journal is what I need! Photo by Prophsee Journals on Unsplash

I was also hesitant to use a habit tracker because one of the habits I’d like to break is, you know, spending too much time on my phone. I tried one highly rated habit tracker. It included long motivational animations with much social science to back their effectiveness. But I couldn’t help feeling that those ten minutes I spent staring at my phone could have spent, you know, on one of the habits I’m trying to build.

Also, I’m pretty good at forming habits so maybe I don’t need a tracker. I like habits. I take comfort in them. Every morning I get up. Brush my teeth. Write in my journal. Record a delight from the previous day. Meditate for ten minutes (Well, except on Saturday’s, when I give myself a day off—not a good idea, but necessary for the part of me that hates feeling like I HAVE to do something. Yeah, I know. It’s complicated). I do three yoga poses (cat-cow, child pose and cobra). Eat breakfast. The habits start to break down after that, but on a good day, I sit down to start writing.

My morning habit game is strong. The rest of the day falls apart. I’d like to walk every day and most days, I do, but sometimes, it’s hard to leave the house. I’d like to do more yoga. More stretching for my aging body. Eat more fruit and veggies. I’d like those things to seem as effortless and taken-for-granted as writing in my journal feels first thing in the morning. So, the habit tracker.

Obviously, habits are something I spend a lot of time thinking about. They are life hacks. But more than that, they are life. We become our habits. This can be a cause for concern. It feels to me that as we age, maybe habits get harder to make and to break. In old age, we get stuck with the habits we spent the most time on, so I’m trying to be very careful about the habits I take with me into the second half of my life.

The pandemic also taught me some interesting lessons about habits. Obviously, we had to give up a lot of habits when the world went into lockdown. We formed new ones in their absence, many of them not particularly intentional. That’s the thing about habits. You can work at them, but sometimes they just happen. You look around one day and find that you’ve formed a new habit, regardless of whether that was what you wanted.

Before the pandemic, Jeff and I went to the coffee shop in the mornings, usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sometimes more often during the summer. Obviously, that became impossible in 2020. Then when things re-opened, it was possible, but was it comfortable to sit there in a mask? Or wise?

In the beginning, I thought of the pandemic as like a dam that had been built, stopping the flow of our habits. Habits were like water in this metaphor. The dam stopped them, but once the dam came down, the habits would flow back into the empty space. Naturally. Effortlessly. Joyfully. We would pick up exactly where our old habits had left off. Of course, this isn’t what happened.

During lockdown, Jeff and I had gotten used to spending the mornings outside in our party pavilion when the weather was warm enough. We had breakfast out there and sometimes, I’d take my computer and do the things I would have done in the coffee shop.

More than that specific habit that replaced going to the coffee shop, we just got out of the habit of leaving our house. Everyone did. The world told us that staying in our houses was perfectly sufficient. That whole need to leave the house—why did we ever feel that in the first place? So unnecessary. It was, in fact, virtuous to stay home. Staying home became a habit that replaced going out.

When lockdown ended, it was not at all like a dam bursting. There was no empty space where the old habits had been. Those old habits had been replaced with new ones. It turns out gardening is a better metaphor for habits than a bursting damn. Old habits died during the pandemic, but new ones grew in their place. Bringing the old habits back meant weeding out the new habits to make room. Like weeding, it takes effort. Conscious, intentional effort. It’s a process I’m still engaged in.

It's not an easy thing. Most of the pandemic habits weren’t intentional or chosen. They’re habits we were forced into, during a time of incredibly high stress. The habits may have sucked in the beginning, but eventually, they came to feel like a safety blanket. Protective. And even if we don’t need those safety blankets anymore, it’s pretty hard to let go of them.

More than that, we may not have even noticed the new habits we formed. The hardest habit to break is one you’re not even aware you have. A 2023 survey found that 42 percent of Americans are less sociable than they were in 2019. Thirty-nine percent said their friends are less sociable than they were before the pandemic. Americans were becoming less social before the pandemic, but the new habits we formed during those years certainly didn’t help.

Maybe, you might argue, that habit of staying home—of not socializing—is perfectly okay. Maybe it is for you. But 30 percent of Americans also believe they’re more anxious than they were in 2019 and 36 percent say their life is in an overall worse state now. It’s hard not to see those things as connected.

My habit tracker app can help me drink more water and go for a walk. It’s a step in the right direction, at least. I wonder where the habit tracker app is for society as a whole. How do we have a conversation about the habits we formed and whether they’re ones we want to keep? How do we get the help we need to do that habit weeding that might need to be done? We are our habits. How do we figure out exactly who we want to be, habit by habit?

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