12:06– John is working on the front of the house. We had pigeons. The wire we put up to keep them out temporarily, then became perfect for squirrels to build a nest. So that’s all cleared out. Squared off and in the process of rebuilding it.

Lauren wants black gutter and downspouts.

The garage has stuff in the car side. We’ll get scaffolding packed up here in a few days.

Goal is still to setup a garage golf dojo. Need the hyper precision puzzle. Target.

Figure that out. Thinking maybe what I do, because it’s so tricky to just get it into that one box there, if I have the target set inside that size of box. The hole is interesting. Seeing when it goes in. If we could make it see through at the bottom. And then some way to wrangle the balls that miss. It’s 10 per day. So that doesn’t have to be crazy. Will still want my bump box target. And the whiteboard with the magnetic balls and then figure out how to add weight to the club quickly and easily and then remove weight quickly and easily. Then have the lights optimized and the strobe light optimized. Figure what could work is maybe even the strobe on a stand of some sort positioned lower so it’s hyper bright right at the impact zone.

2:48 pm — looking at my excel this afternoon. The updates i made are so good.

I cleared it off. I’ve been using it daily. I didn’t build the same mosaic heat map. Maybe for the new year. Or whenever I find time. It would be nice to have it do that. Find the code maybe kind of want to do that for the November launch.

The other thing we need to do. Input your habits here. Make it each month you can track in bricks what you’re tracking. On the side. I like that graph.

I think operating monthly. But then also the entire year. Which you can see in bricks. It’ll just keep going no problem. And that’s the look I was looking for. From that data. What it’s doing is assigning the habit point to the specific day. You’re trying to stack days.

Another view. You take those days you filled and have them find the month and year. Find the day. Fill and have them occupy just single cells.

The exercise of making it perfect the time before and then launching it to friends and a couple responses.

The system was too complicated. But it was legit. I used it the entire year. But now. As I work to simplify. When I wanted these visuals but was stuck manually.

As I neared the run i wanted to feel like I was making progress. Continuing to ramp up. Compared against push-ups and golf. Etc.

What I’m thinking about here is building out the vertical year visual. For each habit.

The main habit puzzle. It’s just a memory game.

Need to make it so you can see what each spot is.

This habit track is not for everyone.

But.

It is for someone…

Who works on a computer daily with access to excel.

Who wants to stay on top of his or her to do list. Both personal and professional.

Who wants to improve their quality of life using the power of habit. Using atomic habits.

Who knows the power of habits and wants a way to track them daily. Effortlessly. As minimally as possible.

Well then I’ve got an excel document for you.

Based off how I would track habits by hand. I transported that to excel and automated the data capture, so one action for a single habit would generate loads of data to work with to visualize.

So awesome being able to track habits quickly daily when I’m going about my work and my family life, and then whenever I want to check in on the day or week or month or year to see how I’m doing. How construction is going.

You’ve got all the stats and visuals right there rolling in the background.

That’s how I was able to go from running 0 km per day to 50km in a single day. In less than a year. I started super small. The first runs. We’re just about putting the shoes on and no worrying about much else. First run was 20 minutes. I had other runs less than 10 minutes.

What I was doing was carving out the mental space within the days. To figure out what I needed to do around this priority. To help me do this thing I wanted to do. But had to learn how to fit it into my day. And allow that to happen systematically. But also organically.

It was not just running I need to do consistently. But also stretching. Eating well. Preparing for next day night before. And then strength training. Eating well. Worked on a skill as well because I want to level up my skill as a golfer. I tracked and progressed across the board in all these areas. With the sort of bullseye peak I was working towards was the grizzly ultra marathon.

Training was an ultra marathon. It was not always pretty. Going for a 7 minute run does not inspire much confidence in your wife who’s concerned about your ability to run this 50k race. But. I always felt fairly on top of what I was doing. Being able to see the full picture.

The new visualizations I’ve built for this next version would’ve helped, I created them based off how I manually reviewed my progress with a few months to go before the race. But if that was all tracking visually along the way I think I would’ve been even better about getting the proper training in earlier. Alas, I’m also more experienced now. If I were to sign up for the race next year. I know and can feel what training would look like in those earlier days, weeks, months, to get me even more ready and confident.

Anyways, I digress, the previous gen of this workbook was insanely useful for what I just did this past year. I’m excited to use the new version I’m just in the last stages of polishing up for distribution.

I’m excited to track my progress. To level up. I do not have the running goal set yet. But I do believe I’ll run regardless and aim for as many runs as possible. Do the infinite game for it. Strava will help me push further there. Give me motivation there. Similar. It works by just tracking a run. You hit start. And then finish when you’re done. And it’s kept track of everything you just did. And then allows you to, encourages you to check out the stats.

It also offers multiple ways to visualize the specific run but also the historically runs.

I still liked my visual of the months and just showing a fill when a run occurred. 1 point per day. Super simple but over months of the year you can see. Holidays. Sick. Injured. Distracted. Etc.

You feel that power when you’re filling in each day.

And for that specific feel. I did not get that from the Strava.

Plus Strava is just running. (And walks and bikes etc).

But seeing how you’re doing across the board. Gives even greater insight that you can act on, learn from.

The fact it’s so good at processing your to do list. Daily and week to week. Means im using it to plan my days and weeks with it. Daily. Which means im right there next to my habit tracker and the fact Im showing up here makes it that much easier to click a button to task complete a habit. Which makes it even more likely you’ll keep that updates as you go through the day.

And then it’s all stored for you to review back at any point.

The quickness of it. And the usefulness of it. And then seeing the habits building in real time in several visuals. It’s quite powerful when altogether in this document here. And it’s simple. Super simple. No extra this or that.

Need to make it quick to start. Click here to start.

Add habits here.

And you’re good to go.

What it will do is update the date. And then on the right side time section. It’ll delete up to the proper day you’re starting.

Then you’re good to go. Start any day of the month.

Could probably automate the month as well. To make it possible for you to start December and have the month ready to go there.

And then have the legend pop up so you can cheat and check.

Let me explain this square shape here.

It’s like a remote control. It’s a bunch of buttons that switch. When you click the button it turns on. Can’t really reverse. You can but it’s pretty much like writing in ink.

Which means you’ve got to be intentional when you click which adds a hit of excitement. When it feels kind of permanent. And then it fills in and you feel good. Dopamine.

And then dopamine when you see your progress. Filling days in. Being able to see it for each of the 19 things you’re tracking daily.

19 sounds like a lot. But really. It’s not.

What i did was assign 5 of them to just general mobility things. Get into a deep squat. Do a single pull up. Etc.

What these minimum viable movements. Broken out like this. Helped me build the full picture. Because when training stated kicking up a notch. I knew where to do squats and pull ups and had a mat for stretching. Etc. pull up bar. Incline decline squat board. Free weights. A mirror. Etc etc.

And I wouldn’t do a single squat. I was super comfortable doing a full workout and having squats a part of it. Early days your carving out mental space. In your day. In your environment. And triggering your brain to remember these things. Build out these spaces. Daily.

And then being consistent. So tough. But this excel tool. Made it easy to see.

But then when training scaled up I was rock and rolling ready.

And throughout a day. When one is wake up early (5am). Tracking that. Or drinking a big glass of water after you wake up. Or writing down 3 things you’re grateful for. These are quick wins you can track and build strategically. So they become automatic. Which takes even less time and energy.

Getting ready for tomorrow. Today. Especially the stuff in the evening.

Found it so useful to pack a lunch. Meant I would eat a lunch, I was simple too accustomed to eat at lunch I was wasting away. Instead of writing eat lunch. What mattered was preparing the lunch so when lunch time rolled around it was ready required no extra effort. Do that night before was a game changer. I tracked that. And now it’s automatic. But I still track it. But it’s become quite effortless. Yet still important. But maybe in time I’ll replace with next better me stuff.

Setting out clothes I’ll wear night before too. So much better than rummaging around in the morning trying not to wake anyone up. In the dark. To find a pair of socks, pants, etc.

Do that night before. Track it. Makes waking up at 5am a lot easier.

So not only is this tool great for all that. But what I’ve described is also a way for you to be more scientific creating these habits you wish to build. The tasks you wish to track.

It helps you key on the actions needed to achieve the outcome desired. You have all the data. When you’re doing this. You set your intention for the things you’re tracking. Then without judgment track them. And then after a week. Month etc. you see how you’re doing and what tweaks you need to make.

Building habits is an art form. But if you’ve got the right tool you can build them with way more efficiency. Confidence.