Automated Habit Tracker in Notion (HowTo)
Hello, Notion fans! In this article, I will show you how to build an automated weekly habit tracker in Notion.
In the end, you will get this result. And as this is a technical guide, let’s dive in right away.
Step 1. Create “Trackers” database
- On an empty page type “/data” and choose Database Inline block from the drop down menu. Give a name to your newly created database, “Trackers”
- Remove the “Tags” column and add 7 Checkbox columns for 7 days of the week and a Date column named “Week start date”
Step 2. Create a template for your habit
- Choose one of the habits that you are going to track right away and create a template for it (blue arrow sign to the right of the blue New button and then + New template
- Give it a name, set Week start date to @Today and optionally add an icon
Step 3. Set up the automation
- Open template settings (3 dots to the right from the template name), then Repeat, then Weekly
- Make sure that there is only Monday selected (i.e marked with blue circle). Or Sunday if you start your weeks on Sundays.
- Change the time to 12:05 AM (to avoid the risk that the scheduler potentially may process this automation at 11:59 PM if we set timer to 12:00 AM).
- Save the changes. You will see 2 blue arrows near the template name which means that it has a scheduler set up.
- Duplicate this template for all your other habits, and change the name and optionally icon. The cool thing here is that you do not have to set up automation for every next habit because by duplicating the first template you duplicate its automation settings as well.
Notion will automatically add fresh trackers for you next Monday.
Step 4. Set up the views
- To only see current trackers, set up the filter to display trackers created this week. Filter -> Week start date -> is relative to today & This week
And let’s create a separate view to see trackers for all the time
- Create a new view — click on plus sign to the right of the current view tab (1)
- optionally change its icon (2) and give it a name “All trackers” (3)
- set up the sorting based on the week start date in the descending order (5–6)
- and add grouping by name (8–9) — thus you will see all your trackers grouped based on which habit they are for
Step 5. Tracker for the ongoing week
The automation set up in the 3rd step will start working next Monday. Until then, we need to manually add trackers for the current week.
- First of all, let’s delete these 3 records added initially
- To create trackers manually just click on every template one by one
- optionally correct the Week start date to Monday of this week.
- to wrap up, let’s rename the view to “This week”
Yay! You are all set now. Every Monday you will see a set of fresh trackers and “All trackers” tab will show you how things were going with your habits.
Advanced features?
Notion allows to do a lot more. After 4 years of tracking habits in Notion, I’ve developed what I consider to be the most effective system for this purpose. It includes all the essential features without overwhelming me. Aside from tracking non daily habits, it offers insights, trends, rewards, and reviews. Check it out here:
- Holistic Habit Tracker template
Which features do you find the most essential for a habit tracker? Share your thoughts in the comments. And I am here to assist if you face trouble implementing the steps described in this article.
