If you've set up one of our popular list-style widgets, like the "Today's List" or "Progress Chain", you might have noticed that only your good habits are displayed. You may be wondering, "Where are my bad habits?"
This is not a bug, but a deliberate design choice based on the psychology of habit formation. This guide will explain why bad habits are excluded from these specific widgets and show you the best alternatives to track them on your home screen.
The Reason: Focusing on Action and Positive Momentum
The main reason for this design is to keep your daily to-do list focused and motivating.
Your "Today's List" is for Taking Action. This widget is designed to be your daily checklist, reminding you of the positive actions you need to take. Including a bad habit like "Don't Smoke" on a list of things to do can be counter-productive. The goal is to avoid and forget about the bad habit, not be reminded of it alongside your positive tasks.
The "Progress Chain" is for Celebrating Success. This widget's purpose is to create a satisfying, visual chain of your accomplishments. For bad habits, success is achieved through inaction or avoidance. If we included bad habits here, the widget would just show a series of blank or failed ("X") blocks, which isn't very motivating to see on your home screen every day.
By keeping these widgets focused on your good habits, we aim to create a more positive and action-oriented dashboard for your day.
The Solution: Use Widgets Designed for Bad Habits
While bad habits don't appear in the main list widgets, we have other widgets that are perfectly designed to help you track them effectively!
We highly recommend you use one of these instead for your bad habits:
Limit Tracker Widget: This is ideal for bad habits where your goal is to stay under a certain limit (e.g., "less than 30 minutes of social media" or "fewer than 3 cups of coffee"). It shows you how much of your daily "budget" you have left.
Day Since / Streak Widget: This is the most powerful option for quitting a habit completely. It shows a running counter of how long it's been since you last logged a failure, which is a fantastic motivator to not break the chain.
By choosing the right widget for the right type of habit, you can create a home screen that is both motivating and perfectly suited to your personal goals.
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