Habit-tracking templates are among the most searched resources for Notion and in the past, I already gave my readers a quick review of over 6 attractive habit-tracking templates for Notion.
For this review, I have looked deeply into the habit tracker by Daniel Canosa.
Daniel is mostly known in the Notion community for his Youtube channel, where he is showing his audience how to use Notion more productively.
With his habit tracker, he tried to create a customizable template that would nudge his users when they fall behind on their habit goals.
But before we dive into the review, let me first explain why we should build habits in the first place.
About habit tracking
Our willpower is limited. Therefore it is not a good strategy to rely on willpower for long-term gains. Instead, it is a much better strategy to build long-lasting habits. According to James Clear, habits are basically reliable solutions to recurring problems in your environment.
They work because the more often you do a certain action, the more it becomes ingrained into your identity, and the less willpower you will need to complete this action. In a way, you can think of habits as tics that you develop by doing a certain action over and over again.
Once an action becomes automatic, you don’t need to track it anymore. But it is crucial to stay focused as long as you feel resistance when doing the action.
According to a study done by Philippa Lally this period can last between 18 to several hundred days.
Habit trackers for Notion
Notion is a great app for tracking habits and making sure that one is doing an action regularly till it becomes a habit.
But when Daniel Canosa first searched for Notion Habit Trackers two years ago, he realized that most are either too simple or too complex.
If they are too simple, they don’t help you to make your habits stick.
But in the opposite case, the customization becomes a nuisance. Without being familiar with Notion formulas or database relations, most people would simply get frustrated and give up tracking habits altogether.
So Daniel set out on a journey to get this balancing act right.
Did he succeed and finally create a habit tracker that offers you customization possibilities without bothering you with complexity?
Let’s take a look inside his template!
A look inside the “Professional Habit Tracker†by Daniel Canosa
The template welcomes you with the sentence:
â³ Welcome to the most sophisticated, easy to use and complete Habit Tracker ever built in Notion.
After summarizing the 6 main benefits of the template, Daniel already leads the users through a detailed onboarding process.
Onboarding Process
The template allows you to set up the tracking of up to 10 habits at once. During the onboarding process, you are simply required to enter the name of the habit you want to track and to set a weekly frequency – the number of times you want to do a habit per week – into the setup panel.
I chose the habits of 1. Lifting Weights, 2. Meditate and 3. Journaling and decided to do them 3, 7 and 5 times per week.
To help you calculate your success later on, you can also input how many habits you added in total.
In the next step, you can add the current week: This view helps you to aggregate all data weekly.
Lastly, Daniel recommends hiding all the habit properties not used for tracking (for me Habit 4-Habit 10)
Dashboard
After the onboarding, you can click through the dashboard page. Here you have the option to:
- Track the habits for today
- Add a new week
- See your habit history
- Redo the onboarding process
- Or access the databases of the template
Tracking Habits
You simply scroll to the Habit Tracker Database and create a new daily entry. Connect it with the current week and click on the checkbox of the habits you completed this day.
Habit Status
This view is giving you status feedback on whether you are on the track to doing all your habits.
It turns â—ï¸ when you must do the habit every remaining day of the week if you want to achieve your goals. If it ever turns 🔴, you failed this week.
My Habits History
In this dashboard, you can see the habit status of each tracked week. In addition to the feedback on the individual habits, you can also see what percentage of the weekly goal you have achieved.
How easy is it to navigate this Notion template?
Daniel’s template offers one of the best onboarding processes I’ve seen in a Notion template. Navigating the different dashboards works flawlessly and the architecture is logical and clear. This really shows his background in engineering.
The only thing I would have done differently would be to put a direct link to the dashboard on the home page. During my review, users had to click on the onboarding process to reach the dashboard.
How does this habit tracker work on mobile?
The template is working flawlessly on mobile and therefore a good option for people who are on the go and need to input data from their phones.
Aesthetics: How good is the template looking?
The template has a solid Notion template look. Sure, Daniel focuses more on functionality than on aesthetics. But this makes a lot of sense in my opinion.
For whom is this habit tracker a good Notion template?
The habit tracker is perfect for Notion users who
- are serious about tracking habits with different weekly frequencies for each habit and 2. want to spot trends in their habits so they always know what to focus on.
Would I use this Notion habit tracker?
Personally, I have created my own Habit Tracking Template in 2021 – The Habit Compass – which works perfectly for me.
However, I am aware that my template, while offering more functionalities, can be pretty complex for new Notion users. I really have to congratulate Daniel for his ability to create a sophisticated habit-tracking system without overwhelming users with formulas and relations.
Best Features of this template:
What distinguishes this template most from similar templates is the ability to set a weekly frequency, the daily status feedback and the ability to see all the tracked historical data.
Ratings
- Usability 4.5/5
Although quite complex, it is still easy to use. The onboarding process is great.
- Creativity 5/5
Habit trackers are one of the most popular niches for Notion templates. Still, Daniel was able to innovate. For this, he is getting 5 points in this category.
- Aesthetics 4/5
The looks of this template are good. A solid 4!
Overall Rating for the Template 4.5/5
Buy this Template on Gumroad
More Notion Template reviews
- Ultimate Second Brain by iNotion
- Cockpit Life OS — The Notion Template for living a happy and productive life by Nandu Ashok
Searching for more Habit Trackers?
Check out my comparison of the 6 most popular Habit Tracking Templates for Notion
