Habit tracker for students

Student life is strangely hard on habits. There's no one setting your hours, every week looks different, and just as you settle into a routine, exam season arrives and tears it up. Meanwhile the habits that would help most — studying a little every day, sleeping at a normal time, eating something that isn't toast — are the easiest to let go.

A habit tracker won't do the studying for you. What it does is make the small, daily version of your good intentions visible, so you notice when they start to slip instead of finding out the week before a deadline.

The habits worth tracking

You don't need twenty. Two or three well-chosen habits hold up the rest.

A daily study block

Cramming works badly and feels terrible. A short, regular study session — 25 minutes, one lecture's notes reviewed, one problem set started — adds up to far more than the all-nighter. Make it small enough that you'll do it on a busy day, and attach it to something fixed: after your last lecture, after dinner, when you get to the library.

Track the session, not the grade. "Studied for 25 minutes" is something you control today; "got a first" isn't.

Sleep

It's the habit that quietly decides how well every other one goes. You don't need a perfect schedule, but a rough bedtime and a rough wake-up time make mornings, lectures and concentration noticeably easier. Waking up at the same time is often easier to hold than going to bed at the same time, and the bedtime tends to follow.

Something for your body

A walk between lectures, a run, the gym, or just a glass of water before your first coffee. It doesn't have to be ambitious — it has to happen.

Reading beyond the reading list

Ten pages of something you chose, not something you were assigned. It keeps reading enjoyable when most of it has become work. There's a page on building a reading habit if you want ideas.

Other good candidates

• Review today's notes for five minutes.
• Plan tomorrow before bed.
• Phone in another room while studying.
• Cook one proper meal.
• Call home once a week.

Term time vs exam season

Your habits shouldn't look the same all year, and that's fine.

During term, focus on the steady, boring habits: a short daily study block, sleep, one bit of movement. This is when habits are built, because there's enough slack to recover from a missed day.

During exams, don't add new habits. Shrink the ones you have. Keep sleep sacred — it does more for your marks than an extra hour of revision at 2am. Keep a small amount of movement, because a 15-minute walk clears your head better than another coffee. Let the "nice to have" habits pause without guilt.

Over the holidays, keep one or two anchors, like the wake-up time and a walk. Coming back to a routine is much easier when you haven't dropped it completely.

Weekday habits and weekend rest

A lot of student habits only make sense on certain days: studying on lecture days, the gym three times a week, a lie-in on Sundays. Forcing all of them to be daily is a fast way to "fail" on Saturday.

In a free Crek account, a habit can repeat on the weekdays you choose — Monday to Friday, or Monday, Wednesday and Friday — or once a month. The streak only counts the days the habit was due, so a free weekend never breaks it.

Habits and assignments, in one place

Students juggle two very different kinds of things: habits you do every day, and deadlines that happen once. Most apps only handle one, so you end up with a habit app, a planner, a notes app and a pile of sticky notes.

Crek keeps them together:

• Habits for the things that repeat — study blocks, sleep, the gym.
• A to-do list with due dates for one-off tasks — the essay due Friday, the lab report, the reading for seminar.
• Notes for lecture thoughts, reading lists and ideas.

One place to open in the morning, instead of four. If you're wondering how the two lists differ and why both matter, there's a short guide on habit trackers vs to-do lists.

Getting started

1. Pick two habits. A study block and one other — sleep or movement are the best bets.
2. Make them small. Small enough to do on the week of three deadlines.
3. Give each one a moment. After lectures, after dinner, when you wake up.
4. Open the free habit tracker and add them. No signup and nothing to install; it works in any browser on your phone or laptop.
5. Tick them off each day. If you did one but forgot to tick it, tap that day afterwards to fill it in.
6. Never miss twice in a row. One skipped day is life. Two is the start of dropping the habit.

When you want your habits on both your phone and your laptop, sign in with Google. Everything you tracked moves into your free account, and you can add weekday habits, to-dos and notes from there.

Prefer paper?

Some students like a physical sheet on the wall above the desk. The printable habit tracker makes a monthly or weekly sheet you can print or save as a PDF. It pairs well with an app: the sheet for the overview at your desk, the app for ticking off on the go.

A small start is enough

You don't need to become a different person this term. One study session a day, a roughly regular bedtime and a walk will carry you further than any ambitious plan you abandon by week three. Pick the smallest version, start today, and let the streak do the reminding.