Getting the most out of Routines

Start with steps

A task step is binary: done or not done. "Drink a glass of water." "Check medication." "Review today's tasks." These create the habit of opening the routine and moving through it. They're the foundation.

If you haven't built a routine yet, start here. Build the habit of completing it before adding anything else. A routine you actually finish — even a simple one — is worth more than an ambitious one you skip.

Anchor your routine

The best routine won't stick without a consistent trigger. Don't try to carve out a new time for it — attach it to something you already do.

Morning routines work best when triggered by a behavior you already have: getting out of bed, making coffee, stepping out of the shower. You don't decide to start the routine. It just follows the thing that already happens.

Evening routines work the same way — arriving home, finishing dinner, brushing your teeth.

Pick your anchor based on what's already consistent in your life:

• Regular meals → anchor to a meal
• Consistent sleep schedule → anchor to waking up or going to bed
• Work or school structures your day → anchor to arrival, lunch, or end of day

Add a metric or two

A metric is a number you record during your routine. Unlike a task step, it has a value — and that value tells a story over time.

What's worth tracking? Things that honestly reflect how you're doing. Some examples:

• Sleep (hours)
• Exercise (minutes, or yes/no)
• Weight
• Meditation (minutes)
• Fasting window (hours)
• Energy level (on a 1–10 scale)
• Mood (if you prefer numbers to free-form writing)

You don't need all of these. Pick one or two that feel like honest signals — metrics that would tell you something true about how you're doing, not just whether you showed up.

Start small. One metric is better than six that you stop recording after three days.

Setting units and ranges

Each metric has a unit and a range (minimum and maximum). Both are worth setting thoughtfully — they directly affect how your heatmaps look, which affects how useful and motivating they are.

Units: pick whatever makes the data readable at a glance. Hours for sleep, kg or lbs for weight, minutes for exercise. The unit shows up in the UI when you log and review, so concrete units make the data easier to interpret.

The range: the minimum and maximum aren't the lowest and highest values you could ever record — they're the bounds of what you consider acceptable. Everything below the minimum shows as red in the heatmap. Everything above the maximum shows as green. The range in between gives you meaningful gradation where you actually live.

For sleep: if you'd consider anything under 4 hours a bad night and anything over 8 a great one, set min to 4 and max to 8. Your typical 5–7 hours will show up with real detail — you can see the difference between a 5-hour night and a 7-hour one, rather than everything collapsing into the same shade.

For weight (where lower is better), the logic inverts. If your acceptable range is 85–105kg, set those as your min and max. Values below the minimum show as green; values above the maximum show as red. Your movement within that range — toward or away from your goal — becomes visible in the heatmap over time.

Why metrics matter

A metric logged once is a data point. Logged every day for a month, it's a story.

Without metrics, your routines tell you whether you showed up. With metrics, they tell you how you showed up. The difference is between "I did my routine" and "I've averaged 5.5 hours of sleep for the past two weeks." The second one is information you can actually act on.

But there's something deeper going on too. Most of us carry narratives about ourselves — often negative ones. "I never follow through." "I'm not making any progress." "I always fall off after a few weeks."

Add a journal prompt

A journal prompt is a question built into your routine. It shows up each day as part of completing the routine — you don't have to remember to journal separately.

Good prompts are specific and honest. A few that work well:

• "What's my energy level right now?"
• "What's one thing weighing on me today?"
• "Did I make progress on what matters most yesterday?"
• "What do I need that I'm not getting?"

The goal isn't to produce beautiful journal entries. It's to check in with yourself honestly, every day, with minimal friction.

What to aim for

A mature routine might look like: one or two task steps, two or three metrics, and one journal prompt. That's enough to give you a genuine daily snapshot without overwhelming you.

How to tell if it's working

Signs it's working:

• You're completing it most days without it feeling like a significant burden
• Your heatmaps in the Overview are filling in — you can see consistency at a glance
• You occasionally notice something in the data you didn't consciously know: a pattern, a correlation, something that makes you adjust
• The routine starts to feel automatic — something you do rather than something you mean to do

Signs it needs fixing:

• You keep skipping it — it's too long, poorly timed, or anchored to the wrong trigger. Trim it to the minimum and rebuild.
• Your metrics are mostly empty — you're completing task steps but not logging values. Either the metric is hard to answer at that moment (log it later or change the metric) or it's too much friction (log fewer).
• The data doesn't tell you anything — you picked metrics that don't actually reflect how you're doing. Replace them with something more honest.
• It feels like a chore every day — the routine is probably too ambitious. A 3-step routine you actually complete beats a 10-step one you dread.