Don’t break the chain with Google Calendar

How to Build Habits Using Google Calendar: easily Track Your Habit Streaks and don’t break the chain

Here’s a simple tool that lets you easily keep track of habit streaks right in Google Calendar.

As mentioned in my book Thrive Hacks, a great technique to build a habit is to mark the days when you completed the habit (working out, for example) and then try to create a chain of consecutive days. The longer your chain gets, the more invested you are into not breaking the streak. This gamification method is sometimes referred to as “The Seinfeld Method”.

I created a few tools here that let lets you track your habit chains using Google Calendar.

The tools all generate the same results but are used differently.

Using a Browser Bookmark

This method is very simple to use: just enter the name of the habit you want to track (“Reading” for example) and click on the button.

That will generate a unique link for you that you can add to your browser’s favorites by dragging it to your bookmarks bar (in Chrome press ⌘+⇧+B on Mac or Ctrl+⇧+B on Windows to show the bookmarks bar).

Then every time you want to add an event for the habit you completed, just click on that link from your browser’s bookmarks and it will be added to your Google Calendar.

The link you generate works both on desktop and mobile.

Using a Chrome Extension

I developed this simple Google Chrome extension that shows you a little checkmark. When ever you complete your habit just click on that and it will add the habit to your Google Calendar. It even lets you setup multiple habits you want to track.

If you have more than one habit stored when you click on the checkmark it opens a little window that lets you choose which habit you want to add (you can also rearrange them and add more habits there).