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Start and maintain good habits with Good Habits for iPhone

A free iPhone app will help you follow Jerry Seinfeld's advice: Don't break the chain.

Matt Elliott Senior Editor
Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch.
Expertise Laptops, desktops, all-in-one PCs, streaming devices, streaming platforms
Matt Elliott
2 min read

It seems that when Jerry Seinfeld was starting out, he got himself a big wall calendar draw a red X in the square for each day in which he sat down and wrote new material. He liked seeing a chain of red X's develop and used it as a motivational tactic. Don't break the chain!

You can use this same motivation to be more productive or healthier or what have you, but you don't necessarily need Jerry's wall calendar or red pen. With free iOS app Good Habits, you can use your iPhone to keep track of your chains, whether they're for writing the next Great American Sitcom or simply going to the gym regularly.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

Good Habits makes it easy to add and track your various good habits. Tap the "+" button in the upper-right corner to create a new habit. When you do so, you can name the habit at the top of screen, and you can tap below it to set a reminder.

After naming a habit, you can use the calendar below to keep track of the chain, back-filling dates, if necessary, for a habit that you've already started. Tap the Back button in the upper-left corner to return to Good Habit's home screen that lists your habits.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

Each habit gets its own color. Two numbers are listed to the right of each task. Your current chain is listed with the color background; your longest chain is listed with the gray background. To mark off a habit for the day, you can either tap to check the box from the main list, or you can tap to open a habit and then tap on today's date on the calendar.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

Habits are scheduled on a daily schedule, so you can't, for instance, create a chain for going for a jog every other morning. You can, however, pause a task, which lets you skip a day and keep your chain intact. You can pause a habit by opening a habit and tapping the pause button in the upper-right corner. And once you have completed your novel or script, you can delete a habit by tapping the pause button and choosing the delete option.

(Via LifeHacker)