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The more a habit becomes part of your life, the less you need outside encouragement to follow through. Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.

Making progress is satisfying, and visual measures… provide clear evidence of your progress… they reinforce your behavior and add a little bit of immediate satisfaction…

Habit tracking is powerful because it leverages multiple Laws of Behavior Change. It simultaneously makes a behavior obvious, attractive, and satisfying.

Habit tracking… keeps us honest. Most of us have a distorted view of our own behavior. We think we act better than we do.

…habit tracking can have an addictive effect on motivation. Each small win feeds your desire.

Tracking can become its own form of reward.

Habit tracking also helps you keep your eye on the ball: you’re focused on the process rather than the result.

…habit tracking provides visual proof that you are casting votes for the type of person you wish to become, which is a delightful form of immediate and intrinsic gratification.

The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is that start of a new habit.

We repeat bad habits because they serve us in some way, and that makes them hard to abandon.