Although I never had any plans to track my habits but I started doing it since the start of this year. It was all because of an app called Momentum that I discovered a couple of days back, Momentum’s minimal interface convinced me to download it on my iPhone.
Momentum is a simple habit tracker available for iPhone, Apple Watch and Mac which helps you form new habits. It’s based on Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret of not breaking the chain.
Adding habits is easy and all you need to do it hit the plus icon on the top right. I had no idea if it’ll really work for me or not, so I started with entering three simple habits that I really wanted me to form, waking up early, walk at least 5000 steps and sleep before 12:30. If you’re not sure what to enter, it also shows a list of habits in Tips like Exercise, or Inbox Zero and more which you can get started with.
You can set the days on which you want to repeat a habit, so for example if you are adding a habit and you want it to repeat only on specific days such as on Monday and Tuesday, you can just select those days in the Repeat section. Unselected days will be skipped automatically. It also lets you set a reminder for the habit, so if you want to go for cycling at 9, you can set a reminder for it to get notified.
One of the best thing about Momentum is that it allows flexible scheduling. It’s obvious that you won’t be able to or would not want to complete some habits every single day, just like I don’t like to wake up early on holidays. So what you can do is set a Weekly target for every habit by selecting the number of days a week you want to complete the habit.
Once you’re done entering all the habits you want to form, all you need to do is accomplish your goals on time and maintain the streak. On the main screen, the app displays seven grey blocks, one under each day for each of your habit. A grey blocks signifies that the habit is yet to be completed for that day, white blocks are manually or automatically skipped habits, and when you check off a habit, the block will turn green.
Checking off a habit is simple, just tap on the grey block once and you’re done. You can manually skip a habit for a day, just hold on the grey block and it’ll allow you Skip or Add Note. Tapping on Skip will skip the habit for that day and you won’t even lose your current streak, which is a nice feature for days when you cannot complete the habit for some reason. You can also add notes with the habits. One nice use of notes is that you can add notes such as why you skipped or something specific such as what did you do at the gym on that day.
Momentum also features a Today widget which you can add to your notification center to quickly check off your habits. You can also check your weekly progress right from the widget which is nice.
I have been using Momentum since almost a week now and I think it’s a great app. Since I don’t like clutter in the Notification center, I don’t use Momentum’s today widget. Instead I have reminders setup for all the habits and since the notifications are interactive, I check off the habits right from the notifications. And at the end of the day, I just have a glance at my weekly progress so I can focus on the habits and accomplish the weekly target.
The app also gives you the option to enable or disable App Badge, enabling which shows the number of uncompleted habits for that day in the app badge. You can also enable or disable Sounds and Vibrations. Momentum also lets you set a Daily reminder, so you can set a reminder for the end of the day to have a look at your daily progress.
Free version of Momentum lets you add three habits. Upgrading to premium allows you add unlimited habits, iCloud syncing, Touch ID support and Data export as CSV. So if you upgrade to premium, you can check off your habits from Momentum’s Mac app as well. Personally I think that if you’re really serious in forming new habits then free version might be enough for you.
Momentum is available for free on App Store and Mac App Store.