A calendar on the fridge and a marker pen. Every day you do your micro-habit, you mark a cross. After a week you’ve got a chain of crosses — and your brain really doesn’t like breaking chains. It’s the simplest (and cheapest) habit tracker there is.
Did you know? The method is attributed to Jerry Seinfeld: he marked an X on a calendar for every day he wrote jokes. His only rule: ‘don’t break the chain’. Today’s X protects tomorrow’s.
Seeing your progress add up motivates you more than any app with notifications.
The trick is to mark the cross straight after doing the habit, not at the end of the day. That little gesture of ‘ticking it off’ works as an instant reward, which is exactly what a new habit needs to take hold.
Start today: a calendar, a pen, an X. Tomorrow, another.