Thought my habit trackers were fine until I hit 47 days straight
I used to just scribble a quick dot or X for my daily habits and call it good. Then last month I wanted to see how many days in a row I actually brushed my teeth before noon, and I realized I had to flip through like 8 old notebooks to piece it together. Took me almost 2 hours to figure out I had a 47 day streak going. Now I use a single running log column on each monthly spread so I can see everything without going backwards. Anyone else waste time digging through old pages just to track one habit?
That 47 day streak discovery is the kind of thing that should feel like winning a prize but just ends up feeling like you were doing homework you forgot to turn in. The running log column trick is smart. I tried something similar but my handwriting gets real shaky after day 30 so I can't tell if it's a checkmark or a failed attempt at a bird. The_susan's dot system sounds way more reliable than my approach which is basically a scribble and a prayer. Vera_palmer, I'm pretty sure I broke that streak about three times in the notebooks I lost track of, but 47 sounds better than 12 so I'm sticking with that number. My current system uses a single line of dates on a sticky note that I keep moving to new pages, but I lost the sticky note three times already this month.
Oh man, flipping through 8 notebooks sounds like a nightmare. So did you actually hit 47 days in a row on that habit, or was your streak broken somewhere in the shuffle? I always worry I'll mess up the count and end up celebrating a fake streak.
Wow, yeah, I've totally been there. I actually made a little cheat sheet on the last page of my current notebook where I jot down the streak date for each habit once a week. @vera_palmer, I wouldn't trust my memory either, so I use a tiny colored dot system - green for done, yellow for half done, red for miss. That way I can glance at one column and never have to flip back through old pages. Saves me from accidentally celebrating a fake streak because I lost count somewhere. It's not fancy, but it works.