Form Productive Habits With These Handy Tools

04.08.2012
Habits are powerful: Whether it's in health or in creativity, do a little every day, and soon you've done a lot. But a new habit is not always easy to forge: You might forget to do it, it might feel unnatural, or you might just grow tired of it. Fortunately, quite a few tools are available that can help you stay motivated for the long haul and create lasting habits that help you get to where you want to go in life.

All five of these tools are available in PCWorld's .

Some habits are things you want to do every day, or nearly every day: Exercise, for example, or writing. Jerry Seinfeld is said to have used "productivity chains" in which he would do something each and every day, and never "break the chain," and in this way make steady progress. is a slick free service built on this concept, which lets you track any number of habits. For every day when you've done what the habit calls for, simply log into Chains.cc and mark the day as done. Whenever your chain grows by another week, Chains.cc will offer you an easy way to brag about it on Facebook if you want to. The top of each chain shows your longest streak, as well as the length of your latest streak.

Chains.cc is shiny, but it is very simple. , another free service, has been around for years and looks a bit dated by now, but it offers more options. You can use Joe's Goals to track habits that don't require daily repetition (for example, if you have an exercise routine you do every other day). Joe's Goals can also track bad habits: For example, if you're trying to quit smoking, you can use Joe's Goals to log every day in which you've smoked. Each day gets a numeric grade composed of the number of good habits minus the number of bad habits you've logged for that day.