🍪 #11 - How to keep track of your New Years resolutions
Digital housekeeping and reflection, and a Little Bites wrapped asking for your opinion.
Hi,
and welcome again to Little Bites, my weekly bite on productivity, apps, AI, shortcuts…
This week I would like to guide you through how I keep track of my habits, the digital housekeeping and reflection I did, and need your opinion on looking back at 2023.
As you might have noticed, I didn’t send out a Bite last week. With a lot of things going on, I decided I would rather send out a complete edition rather than something short and incomplete (Quality > Quantity).
Happy reading,
Steven
Reading time: 7 minutes to chew through.
✅ Keeping track of your New Year resolutions
🏷️ Apps
I'm not a person who waits for the start of a new year or new month before starting with a new habit or goal. Any day is a good moment to start, and I feel that delaying the start might set you up for failure before you even get started.
When it comes down to the success of a new resolution, the first action of course is to get started with it. But afterwards, what keeps you going are the systems that you've put in place.
James Clear describes this in-depth in his book "Atomic Habits" on the power of small habits to achieve success. If you haven’t read it yet, I can only advise you to do so as you can learn a lot from it.
James Clear encourages the use of systems that make habits easy, and visible to provide immediate feedback, reinforcing positive behaviour.
And that is where habit-tracking tools can serve as effective visual cues and accountability mechanisms to help you stay on track and build lasting habits.
I've been using this method for a long time, keeping track of what I want to establish as a habit, as well as keeping a log to encourage me to keep going.
For example, I kept track of meditation and breathwork, which has now become an automated action I do every day.
And also for my running, I keep a log. Sure all data is on Strava to see what I did, but in my log, I write down every run I did, how it went, how I felt and how I prepared for it. This way I have something to go back to when I'm struggling and in need of motivation, knowing that not every run went smoothly.
So what tools can you use for habit tracking?
For most of my habit tracking I use the Streaks app, as I mentioned in my productivity stack post.
It's easy to use, minimal, a one-time purchase ($4.99 - for all devices), and supports "to do" habits but also "to not do" habits (like stopping smoking). What I also like is that you can set reminders for each habit at a pre-set time, or when the app expects you to complete it. You also get some statistics on completion and I love the shortcuts support, so you can make habit logging even easier. And in case you missed marking a habit as done, you can always update it afterwards.
Recently, Techcrunch recommended Gola as a resolution tracker. I tested it, and while I liked its design and ability to get AI suggestions on how to start with a habit, it did lack some of the features from Streaks that I need. Like reminders per habit, editing previous days, habits x times per week,...
If you're a TickTick user, you can also use it to track your habits.
While I initially was sceptical about using the habits section of TickTick, as its main purpose is a to-do manager, I found that habit creation and logging were fairly easy.
One thing I like is the heatmap view to see your progress over time, which keeps you going.
While most of my habits will remain in Streaks, I'm giving TickTick a go to see how far I can get this year with reading.
Of course, you don't have to go for complicated tools to keep track of your habits, you can also do this via your note-taking tool. Notion has a ton of habit-tracking templates and people have built Obsidian habit dashboards (ex. see video or video).
It's up to you, but for any habit, the goal is to keep going, and any way of tracking can provide that extra boost.
Are you starting new habits this year?
How are you keeping track of them?
✍️ End of the year housekeeping and reflection
I'm always off during the Christmas break. But due to the obligatory festivities, we don't plan too many other activities and spend most of the time at home. Unfortunately not to sit back and relax, but rather to take this opportunity to do some outstanding household chores and declutter all the stuff we've been keeping or putting aside due to time.
I've extended this exercise to my digital set-up which I can only recommend you do as well.
Some of the things I did were:
Cleaned my RSS list and read-later app saves.
No need to keep items I "might" read contributing to the unread number.
Organized and deleted unnecessary photos and videos.
Looking at the best ones for each day/event and removing duplicates.
Set up a new phone (not restoring a backup), starting with a clean slate.
This removed the legacy of 15 years on the iPhone. You could also do this by removing apps and files you no longer need.
Cleaned my notes in Obsidian and added more structure via tags and "help" pages to be more consistent.
To ensure I use the same format for each new note and reduce cleaning afterwards.
Reviewed my subscriptions.
Cut a few apps and services I hardly used. Removed the friction to select the apps to use and their yearly cost.
On top, I did something I never have done before.
Every year just comes and goes without a proper reflection. Sure, at times I think about things and see where I improved or failed, but I never do it on a thorough scale of all aspects of my life. So for this year, I decided to make a change in looking back and planning for the upcoming year, identifying what I should or want to focus on, and going for it.
Luckily, this is not an exercise I had to start from scratch.
And while I could have used AI to help me with this, I decided to go for trusted and established resources.
I started with a "Year in Review" following a template from Anne-Laure Le Cunff of Nesslabs. It has 8 areas to review with 3 follow-up questions on achievements, struggles and aspirations for next year.
With the knowledge I distilled from this, I knew what I wanted to focus on, I used the "Annual planning guide" from Sahil Bloom to set my goals, checkpoints and anti-goals to make them actionable.
Some aspects I want to work on are:
Read more books (at least 6 this year)
Work towards a sub-3h marathon in 2025 (laying the foundation in 2024)
Being more supportive, proactive and less of a procrastinator when it comes to work and relationships
And you, did you do any housekeeping or reflection?
What would you like to accomplish this year?
♻️ Little Bites Wrapped 2023
🏷️ Wrapped
While I've been writing in the past, none of it felt like my own like this newsletter. I always feel great accomplishment when I schedule a new edition and feel proud of what I created and how it might have reached and inspired you.
So I wanted to look back at 2023 and some of the editions I created and which have had the most reach.
#1 - Creating webpage summaries in iOS & looking for the best browser on Windows
About a simple shortcut to get free ChatGPT summaries of a webpage via the share sheet and how I was searching for a good browser for Windows (I’m back at and happy with Vivaldi).
#2 - Using focus modes on my iPhone & my mobile video editing app
About how focus modes have completely changed how I use my iPhone and how it made me much more productive. I also covered GoPro Quik as my mobile video editing tool.
#3 - How I stay on top of news and tech and why I stopped journaling in Day One
About how I went back to RSS to stay on top of things and why I’m only journalling in my note-taking app (Obsidian).
And you, what did you like most?
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