At the start of 2020, I published a 2019 Year in Review including everything I tracked that year.  Since then, folks have asked me how I came up with the “2019 in Numbers” table, so here is my whole method of habit tracking explained.

Since it’s a related yet more encompassing method than The Tomato Method I wrote about previously, I’ve decided to (half jokingly) call this: The Fruit Stand Method. Also, the resulting calendar looks like a colorful fruit stand.

Overview

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” 

– Will Durant

The Fruit Stand Method is an approach I use to track habits and, by proxy, my long-term goals. Each year, I decide on goals related to the type of person I want to be and then come up with the habits that will get me there. I buy a big calendar with the entire year on a single page and hang it up on a prominent wall in my house. I buy colored pens and assign each habit a different color. Whenever I do one of the habits, I put a dot of the corresponding color on that day of the calendar.

Habit tracking isn’t anything novel and there are a variety of fantastic habit trackers out there. The game changer for me, however, was finding a calendar with an entire year on one page. Most habit trackers provide daily, weekly, or monthly views, but seeing an entire year at a glance helped me put things into perspective.

A yearly tracker also enabled me to stay accountable to habits that I might not do on a weekly or monthly cadence. I believe that we can do everything we want to do in life, just not all at the same time. A single day or week might not be balanced. But an entire year can be. I might not hangout with a friend every day, but I want to have spent time with a bunch of friends across an entire year. The yearly calendar helps me think on longer time scales.

“Balance is timing, not intensity. It is not doing multiple tasks at 80%, but developing the skill of turning it on and turning it off. Sleep fully, then work intensely. Focus deeply, then relax completely. Give each phase your full attention. Balance is “when to” not “how to.”” – James Clear  

How To: The Basics

1. Buy a yearly calendar
   And some colorful pens. This is the calendar I use because I like its minimalistic design.
   
   
2. Decide which habits / goals you want to track
   Some ideas include putting a mark on the calendar whenever you:
        Spend 10 minutes outdoors
        Write a sentence in a reflection journal
        Floss your teeth
        Don’t watch any TV that day
        Make your bed
        Exercise
        Go to bed by X time
        Email/text someone you haven’t talked to in a while
        Post a tweet about something you want to be a domain expert in
        Do one problem on LeetCode
        Spend 30 minutes working through a course on Coursera
   
   I want to call out the difference between process tracking – for example, tracking every time you spend 30 minutes writing – versus outcome tracking – for example, tracking every time you publish a blog post. Personally, I track a mixture of both. But it’s important to be thoughtful about which one makes the most sense for you. Many habits can be defined as either process-oriented or outcome-oriented. 
   
   

   Goal	Process-oriented tracking	Outcome-oriented Tracking
   Read more books	Track each day where you read at least 5 pages	Track the day when you finish reading a book
   Write more blog posts	Track each day where you spend 30 minutes writing	Track the day when you publish a blog post
   Learn more new things	Track each day where you do 30 minutes of an online course	Track the day when you finish an online course

   
   
3. Start tracking
   Make a legend for each habit you decided to track. Hang the calendar up in a prominent wall in your house. Put the pens nearby. And start tracking!

The final thing is: walk before you run. Don’t track too many things. If you’re just starting out, pick one habit. Ask yourself, “What’s the one thing that would give me the most satisfaction if I started doing it regularly?” A good system that you use regularly is better than a perfect system that you never touch. Don’t let fear of perfection prevent you from even starting.

Here’s an example calendar that only tracks one thing: exercise.

How To: Advanced Techniques

Once I started tracking, I got obsessed with knowing more details about the habits I was doing. Over time, I developed the more complex Fruit Stand Method that I use today. If you thrive on analytics as well, you might want to use all or parts of this more complex process:

Monthly Calendars
I print out monthly calendars and use them to keep track of my habits in more detail.

Yearly Calendar
I will periodically transfer over the monthly calendar marks to the yearly one.

AirTable Tracker
At the end of the year, I transfer the data into an AirTable spreadsheet, which then automatically quantifies a bunch of statistics for me. This is how I create the “Year in Numbers” table. Feel free to utilize this AirTable template that I’ve created here.

As an example, here are all the habits that I have ever tracked and how I went about tracking them. FYI, I do not track all of these every year.

Feel free to pick and choose elements of The Fruit Stand Method that you want to try.  This approach helps me hold myself accountable to my goals and I hope that it helps you do the same.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

The Details

• Tools I use: Pens, Monthly calendars , Yearly calendar, Velcro adhesives (makes it easy to take calendars on/off the wall)
• AirTable template I use. You only need to edit things in the “Master” tab. All the other tabs get populated automatically from data in the “Master” spreadsheet. 
• A physical calendar is a really important part of this technique for me. I don’t get the same motivation from just tracking things digitally, but if that’s not the case for you, you might try re-creating this technique digitally