Tracking Habits with Org-mode

Task management systems such as GTD are good for keeping track of projects and todos, as well as periodically recurring tasks. But what is the best way for remembering the daily tasks that one wants to develop as habits? Exercise, relaxation, household cleaning, diet, kindness to others—such habitual obligations can often get lost in the constant clamor of urgent todos. In the midst of everything else, how can you learn to stop biting your nails?

Though the ultimate aim of developing good habits is to internalize them so deeply that one needs no reminders (because they become "second nature"), the most difficult stage is the month or so it takes to learn a new habit. Success often depends both on a commitment to develop a habit and some external means of monitoring one's progress.

This tutorial offers a couple of ideas of how to use org-mode to track habits—with the ultimate aim, of course, of kicking bad habits and learning good ones. A program as powerful as org-mode, of course, has multiple routes to the same end, but these are a few of the techniques that I have found helpful.

A habit is often something you'd like to do every day (or, in some cases, every other day or every week). Org-mode makes scheduling such repeating tasks very easy. To create a recurring task in org-mode, simply schedule the task for the day you'd like to start and add a "repeater" such as +1d for every day, +2d for every other day, +1w for every week, and so on. Here's an example:

** TODO Lift weights
   SCHEDULED: <2009-01-18 Sun +2d>

Now the agenda will remind you to lift weights every other day. When you mark the item DONE, it will be reactivated as a TODO and pushed two days into the future (in this case to January 20).

(If you are procrastinating often, you can add a period in front of the repeater, such as .+2d which will reschedule the completed item two days after it is completed.)

Scheduling a habitual task is only a small step on the path to internalizing it. You also need to provide yourself with some incentive to learn the habit. Without such incentive, it is easy to procrastinate, rescheduling the daily habits—the least urgent todos—to tomorrow…and tomorrow…and tomorrow.

Some productivity guides suggest an simple method for learning a habit. Let's say you want to exercise daily. Take a calendar and cross out each day you exercise. Your goal is to keep the chain of X's going.

Org-mode can provide similar tracking for recurring tasks via the variable org-log-repeat. If this variable is set to "time", then a timestamp will be recorded each time the item is marked done. For the example above, the results would look like this:

** TODO Lift weights
   SCHEDULED: <2009-01-22 Thu +2d> 
   - State "DONE"       [2009-01-16 Fri 23:14]
   - State "DONE"       [2009-01-14 Wed 17:25]

You can see whether you've "broken the chain" by reviewing the log of when you completed the item. If you want even more detailed tracking (or want to leave yourself encouraging notes), you can set org-log-repeat to "note". Then, each time you complete a recurring task, you will be prompted to enter a note.

If you want to enable such logging only for particular tasks, then you can do so via properties:

** TODO Lift weights
   SCHEDULED: <2009-01-20 Tue +2d>
   - State "DONE"       [2009-01-18 Sun 23:22] \\
     Way to go!
  :PROPERTIES:
  :LOGGING:  lognoterepeat
  :END:

It's nice to have a record of how well you're learning your new habit. But it's especially nice to get a visual representation that gives you a quick overview of how often you've "broken the chain"—i.e., let the new habit slip.

One easy way to get a visual representation of a habit is to keep a quick chart in a table. If you want to make sure you exercise every day, you could type the following:

| Week Starting | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri | Sat | Sun 

And then press tab to create a nice table that you can fill in:

| Week Starting | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---------------+-----+------+-----+-------+-----+-----+-----|
| Jan 12        | x   | x    | x   | x     |     | x   | x   |
| Jan 20        | x   | x    | x   |       | x   | x   | x   |

Ooops. I forgot to exercise a couple of times.

For a more robust habit tracking, I use the following technique:

For each daily habit I want to develop, I create a recurring task. I also add a special tag "DAILY". Then I make sure to check the task as DONE each day I complete it:

* Habits
** TODO Do dishes							 :DAILY:
   SCHEDULED: <2009-01-22 Thu +1d> 
   - State "DONE"       [2009-01-20 Tue 12:59]
   - State "DONE"       [2009-01-21 Wed 20:10]
** TODO Exercise							 :DAILY:
   SCHEDULED: <2009-01-22 Thu +1d> 
   - State "DONE"       [2009-01-19 Mon 19:59]
   - State "DONE"       [2009-01-21 Wed 07:58]
** TODO Floss								 :DAILY:
  SCHEDULED: <2009-01-22 Thu +1d> 
  - State "DONE"       [2009-01-19 Mon 17:15]
  - State "DONE"       [2009-01-20 Tue 11:05]

In my agenda view I can quickly filter for daily habits using a secondary query:

C-c a / DAILY

Or I can filter out DAILY tasks to unclutter the agenda view:

C-c a / - DAILY

Finally, I can see how well I've kept up with my habits by using a custom agenda command:

(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      '(("h" "Daily habits" 
         ((agenda ""))
         ((org-agenda-show-log t)
          (org-agenda-ndays 7)
          (org-agenda-log-mode-items '(state))
          (org-agenda-skip-function '(org-agenda-skip-entry-if 'notregexp ":DAILY:"))))
        ;; other commands here
        ))

This command gives me a weekly view of whether and when I accomplished my daily goals:

Week-agenda (W04):
Monday     19 January 2009 W04
  habits:     17:15...... State:     (DONE) TODO Floss                   :DAILY:
  habits:     19:59...... State:     (DONE) TODO Exercise                :DAILY:
Tuesday    20 January 2009
  habits:     11:05...... State:     (DONE) TODO Floss                   :DAILY:
  habits:     12:59...... State:     (DONE) TODO Do dishes               :DAILY:
Wednesday  21 January 2009
  habits:      7:58...... State:     (DONE) TODO Exercise                :DAILY:
  habits:     20:10...... State:     (DONE) TODO Do dishes               :DAILY:
Thursday   22 January 2009
  habits:     Scheduled:  TODO Do dishes                                 :DAILY:
  habits:     Scheduled:  TODO Exercise                                  :DAILY:
  habits:     Scheduled:  TODO Floss                                     :DAILY:
Friday     23 January 2009
Saturday   24 January 2009
Sunday     25 January 2009

Again, these are just a couple of ways that I use org-mode to keep track of regular habits. I hope this brief tutorial gives a few more ideas about how to use this wonderful time management program.