Free habit tracker that works right here.

1. Add a habit. Type something small you want to do every day — “drink 8 glasses of water”, “read 20 pages” — or pick one of the suggestions.
2. Tick it off. Each habit shows today and the two days before. Press today’s circle when you have done it; press an earlier day to fill in one you did but forgot to mark.
3. Watch the streak. The number beside each habit is how many days in a row you have kept it up. Miss a day and it starts again — the record of every other day stays.

When you want the same habits on your phone and your computer, sign in with Google. Everything you tracked here moves into your account, streaks included.

A habit tracker is a simple record of whether you did a habit each day. The oldest version is a paper calendar with a cross on every day you kept your promise to yourself; the idea is that after a few days you have a chain, and the chain itself becomes a reason to keep going.

A digital habit tracker does the same thing without the pen. It remembers every day for you, counts your streak, and never runs out of pages — and because it is always in your pocket, it is there at the moment you actually do the thing.

Tracking does not make a habit easier to do. It makes it easier to keep doing, for three reasons.

• It is a reminder. Seeing an empty circle for today is a nudge at exactly the right moment.
• Progress becomes visible. A habit pays off slowly. A row of filled-in days is proof that you are building something long before the results show.
• It keeps you honest. Memory flatters us. A record shows the real rhythm — which days slip, and whether a habit is sticking or quietly fading.

The trap is treating a streak as something you can only fail. You will miss days. The useful rule is to never miss twice in a row: one gap is a bad day, two is the start of a new habit you didn’t want.

Start with one or two, and make them small enough that you can do them on your worst day. A habit you keep at a small size beats a big one you drop in a week — you can always grow it once it sticks.

A few that people often start with:

• Drink 8 glasses of water
• Read 20 pages
• Walk 10,000 steps
• Meditate for 10 minutes
• In bed by 11
• Write in a journal
• No phone after 10pm
• Stretch for 10 minutes

Track what you control, not the outcome you want. “Walk every day” is a habit; “lose five kilos” is a result, and a tracker full of results you cannot tick yet is just discouraging.

Not everything is daily. The gym might be Monday, Wednesday and Friday; paying the bills is once a month. In a Crek account a habit can repeat every day, on the weekdays you choose, or on a day of the month — and its streak only counts the days it was actually due, so a rest day never breaks it.

Habits are easier to keep when someone else is keeping them too. In a Crek account you can make a group, add people by their username, and give every habit and todo in it an owner: anyone in the group, one person, or everyone — each with their own tick and their own streak. What’s yours to do shows up on your own Today list; everything else you track stays private.

• Habit tracker for couples — the habits you share, the chores you split, and a streak each.
• Family habit tracker and chore chart — every chore with one owner and a day, on everyone’s phone.
• Habit tracker with friends — a small accountability group doing one habit side by side.
• Team habit tracker — recurring jobs, shared routines and team challenges.

All three work; the best one is the one you will actually open. A printable habit tracker on the fridge is hard to ignore but stays at home. A Google Sheets or Excel template is endlessly flexible and tedious on a phone. An app or a site like this one is with you wherever you are, fills in the maths for you, and needs nothing but a browser.

Crek is the last kind, with one thing most habit apps leave out: a to-do list and notes beside your habits, so the things you do once and the things you do every day are in the same place.