The word “widget” makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit, but widgets can be very useful!
I’ve failed to use productivity apps successfully for an embarrassing reason. The act of opening up an app is apparently too challenging for me. But I recently placed interactive widgets on my phone’s first screen, and I’ve been infinitely more compelled to live each day a little bit better.
How I Track My (Mini) Habits
In the lower left corner, you can see my 4 habits. I’ve completed 3 today, but I still need to plan for a minute. BRB.
I have 4 mini widgets on my front screen, one for each of my habits (three of which are mini, the other of which was mini and is now full-sized). When I complete them, I tap the widget icon once, and the transparent box with an X transforms into a colored box with a check. How satisfying! This doesn’t only change on the front screen—it records it in the app!
The app is called Loop – Habit Tracker, and it’s the best app for tracking (mini) habits that I’ve found. I’m sorry iPhone owners, as I believe this app is only on Android. But there may be iOS options like this out there.If you know of a similar widget solution for iOS, let me know and I’ll see about adding it to this post! Whatever you use, I highly recommend one with widget functionality that lets you see and interact with your habits on your home screen.
Habit Tracking: What Works and Why?
The key to following through on your plan to build habits is daily mindfulness. This is best accomplished through tracking, which is a source of accountability, encouragement, and motivation to keep your streak alive. In the past, I used a giant desk calendar to physically check off my habits. This was excellent and empowered my initial life-changing mini habits.
In the last few years, I’ve been on the move a lot more. That meant that a giant desk calendar wouldn’t work for me anymore since it isn’t even slightly travel-friendly. The natural second choice has always been my phone, but until I found Loop, nothing worked for me. I’d set up my habits, and then ignore the app within a week as my habits went unchecked.
The reason why the giant calendar worked and the phone apps didn’t is visibility and presence. The giant calendar was a major focal point in my room where I spent much of my time. The phone apps I tried were easily ignored in the sea of 100 other phone apps.
The widget changed everything.
Behold The Power of Widgets!
Doesn’t it seem inconsequential to have a widget instead of just opening an app? While it may seem that way, it isn’t. The difference between winners and losers is smaller than you think, and often comes down to small little “tricks” like this to decrease resistance and make it a little bit easier to do the right things.
The overarching strategy for all of life is to increase resistance to things you want to do less of and decrease resistance to things you want to do more of. This isn’t weak, it’s smart. It’s the same concept behind why we make planes and vehicles aerodynamic. When you decrease resistance, you effectively increase the impact of your power. A swimmer will swim slightly faster (with the same amount of effort) if they shave their body hair and wear specialized swimwear, just because they’ll glide easier through the water.
Small improvements should never be underestimated (even though they always are). Consider the thousands of people who have changed their lives by choosing to do “stupid small” mini habits each day. That little bit of effort grows exponentially over time. For me, it meant much greater levels of fitness, reading, and writing. For others, it’s meant a cleaner home or being a better parent. This widget-over-app tracking method can produce similarly surprising results.
Understand The Difference
I really want you to understand and visualize the difference here. Most people place a productivity app among dozens of others apps (some useful and some superfluous). With a widget, you can have habit tracking on your phone’s home screen. The uncompleted, blank tasks will stare right into your eyes all day until you check them off. This accomplishes three things…
- It implicitly and explicitly elevates the importance of habit development. A person’s main phone apps says a lot about them. Twenty percent of my phone’s home screen is now dedicated to habit development. That says, “This guy is serious about creating these habits.” If they’re hidden inside an app, it says, “This guy might be interested in developing habits. We’ll see how often he opens this app.”
- You’ll automatically get very frequent reminders every day. Most people look at their phone a lot every day.
- When you’ve done them all, and have checked them off, you’ll then be reminded of how awesome you were to accomplish them! Your slight-nagging home screen will become a “conquered” home screen. How satisfying!
This works perfectly with no-cue mini habits, in which you don’t have a specific cue and simply set out to accomplish the task before you go to sleep each night. The weakness of this method is that you might forget to do something if you don’t set a specific time or cue for doing it. That’s obviously not a problem if your habits are prime real estate on your home screen.
Try it. It’s been a game changer for me; now my mini habits are powerful even when I’m on the road!
If you have Android and don’t already have a great system for tracking your mini habits, Loop is a must-download app. I have no affiliation with them and no incentive to promote them. But I’m very happy that they’ve created an app and widget that work well with human psychology!
I’ve included basic instructions for how to make Loop widgets for Android. NOTE: Before you follow this process of putting these small widgets on your home screen, you must first create your habit(s) in the app because it will ask you which habit you’d like to use in the widget (in step 3).
FINAL NOTE: I recommend a “before bedtime” deadline instead of arbitrarily saying “before midnight.” If you complete a habit after midnight, you might notice that the habit widgets have reset to the next day. In that case, you can go into the app and check off your habit for the prior day.