Tracking habits
One Habits Collection with a preset per habit — plus streak calendars, counting habits, medicines, and a daily entry that appears on its own.
The tempting way to track habits is one Collection per habit: Brush teeth, Candy free day, Read today. Twenty habits later you have twenty Collections cluttering your sidebar, twenty entries in every picker, and twenty near-identical shapes to maintain.
There's a much better shape, and it's the one we recommend: one Collection called Habits, with a preset for each habit.
The rule of thumb
A new Collection is only worth it when the thing needs different fields. Same fields, different starting values? That's a preset.
A run needs distance, a route and a pace. A checkbox habit needs a tick. So Running deserves its own Collection — but Brush teeth and Read today are the same shape wearing different names, and they belong together.
Setting up your Habits Collection
Create one Collection named Habits with these Properties:
| Property | Kind | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Title | The habit's name, filled in by the preset |
| Category | Tags | Which habit this is — the important one |
| Done | True/false | The tick |
| Page | Page | An optional note for the day |
Then add one preset per habit on the Collection's Presets tab. Each preset carries that habit's name, its emoji, and its Category tag:
- 🪥 Brush teeth — Category:
Brush teeth - 🍬 Candy free day — Category:
Candy free day - 📖 Read today — Category:
Read today
Now logging is: New → pick the habit. The entry arrives already titled, already tagged, ready to tick.
Why the Category tag matters
The tag is what makes a habit a thing rather than a piece of text. Charts filter on it, automations aim at it, and your history is grouped by it. Everything below depends on each habit having its own Category tag.
Counting habits
Some habits aren't yes-or-no — three glasses of water, 20 push-ups, 10 pages. Add a Number Property (call it Count) alongside Done, and give that habit's preset a starting value if it always comes in the same size.
Then chart it as a goal ring with a daily target, filtered to that habit's Category tag. You get a ring that fills as you log instead of a box that's either crossed out or not.
Streak calendars — one per habit
A Habit chart is the cross-out calendar for "don't break the chain". With everything in one Collection, you get one per habit:
- Add a chart, pick Habits as the data source and your Done property.
- Under Filter, narrow it to one habit's Category tag.
- Pick Habit as the chart type.
That calendar is now that habit's streak, and nothing else's. Tapping a day ticks that habit — the others on the same day are left alone. If the day was empty, tapping creates the entry for you, already tagged with the right habit, so the calendar counts it immediately.
Repeat for each habit and you have a wall of streak calendars on one dashboard.
Medicines and supplements go in their own Collection
A dose isn't a checkbox. Creatine 5 g and Melatonin 1 mg need a substance and an amount, so they're a different shape — which by the rule of thumb means a different Collection:
| Property | Kind | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Title | "Creatine 5 g" |
| Substance | Tags | Which one this is |
| Taken | True/false | |
| Dose (mg) | Number | Put the unit in the name |
| Page | Page |
Then one preset per substance, each pinning its Substance tag and defaulting the dose. Took something twice today? That's two entries — don't model "morning" and "evening" as separate Collections.
Only track it here if it isn't tracked elsewhere
The quiet trap with habits is double-logging. If you already have a Workouts Collection, don't also keep a "worked out today" habit — you'll end up with two records that disagree the first time you forget one, and neither will be trustworthy.
Ask: does this fact already live somewhere? If yes, chart it from there. Habits are for the things that have no other home.
Renaming is safe
Rename a habit, its preset, or its tag whenever you like. Under the hood each preset is bolted to its tag by a permanent hidden id, not by the words — so "Journaling" becoming "Daily journal" doesn't split your history, doesn't empty your streak calendar, and doesn't quietly create a second tag beside the old one.
A daily entry that appears on its own
You can have each habit's entry show up every morning without touching your phone. On the Automations page, add a scheduled rule that creates an entry in Habits through that habit's preset — it arrives already titled and already tagged, exactly as if you'd picked the preset yourself.
An entry you never tick isn't a mistake — it's the record that you skipped that day, which is precisely what a streak calendar needs to show a gap.
Two details worth knowing:
- Each habit's rule checks only its own habit before creating. Ten habits in one Collection means ten entries each morning, not one habit silencing the other nine.
- If you already logged that habit yourself before the rule ran, it skips the day rather than leaving you a duplicate.
See Automations for how to set the schedule up.
Next
- Default values & presets — how presets work in full
- Building charts and dashboards — habit calendars, rings and streaks
- Automations — rules that run on a clock
- Tag and Multi-tag — the Property kind behind Category