Better Habit Tracking in harsh
This post is about harsh , a minimalist, command line habit tracker designed to help forge, track and build habits into lasting changes. Simple, easy, no-nonsense habit tracking for geeks. Check it out if you thinkyou could use some help on your latest New Year’s Resolutions
I have a dear, close friend who has managed to keep her Duolingo streak over 1550 days (that’s over 4 years!). And, through a bit of incremental effort almost every day and with time, has managed to be functionally fluent in a trio of languages she did not know a few years ago. It is impressive and humbling to sit here and watch her watch Korean shows and read the Hangul subtitles when she comes to visit after work sometimes.
While harsh doesn’t harass you with Duo’s earnest, the philosphy is the same: small habits repaeated compound into impressive goals.
And I’m here to tell you it works. I crushed my 2025 goals (and even those I did not achieve were near-misses I’m just rolling over.).
So, since you are most likely trying to puzzle out how you are going to hit those 2026 NYRs you set for yourself New Year’s Day, I’d suggest a simple formula: break them down into small habits you can increment over time, write them down, and track your progress so you’re holding yourself to account. Personally, I find having a streak chain my almost-OCD brain does not like to break visualyl helps me, but you do you.
The benefit of tracking is that when you do fall off the wagon, not only are you incentivized to restart if that stupid graph is looking you in the face every day (it more insidious than you think.), but you can start to see patterns as to why things might be breaking, and with some (generally environmental) changes, fix them so your hbaits become enduring.
Longer Range Tracking
This is one of the main reasons I wanted to improve the ability to look at longer range habits over time in harsh.
Also, at least in my case, some of my habits are shorter term. As an example, I certified as an Emergency Medical Responder this year, which was am intense, short-ish term goal that required quite a bit of discipline, but as a habit, it had a defined start and an end. I also switched languages I was learning when a scouting trip in August and changing entrepreneur visa rules made me rethink relocation to another country.
harsh doesn’t reflect these things well, and I kinda missed seeing them in the
graph once I was done, as well as feeling like I wasn’t geting credit for the
fact I’d been consistent all year in training (I had just commented out the
habit entry which removes it from logging consideration and created a new
habit.).
Not only did I miss it, but it felt somehow wrong that i shouldn’t be able to count coup on something awesome I really felt great about accomplishing. And, I had to put other habits to the side quite intentionally in order to accomplish it, so the story of why I suddenly started skipping another habit (other coursework) was incomplete and that somehow felt wrong, even if I knew the oral history of what happened there.
Basically, the data should reflect the reality explicitly rather than orally.
So, with a minor tweak to the habits config, end dates are now (optionally) supported in harsh. Finished habits do not count against scoring or long-term stats or affect the sparkline or show in the consistency graph. They also appear muted to de-emphasize them and indicate they are inactive compared to on-going habits.
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If you have an on-going rolling file (harsh is very fast even on log files of over 4 years) this may be super helpful for your stats, though I personally roll over my log and habits file every year to just start fresh. YMMV.
Fin
As with everything about harsh, I hope you find it simple, minmalistic and it helps you get what you are trying done and build a better life for yourself. Forging habits should be easy. Also, if you have any great idea for features which stick with the minimal philosphy, please file an Issue on the harsh repo . One of the best additions we had last year came from a year came from a user (and I’m embarassed to admit I had not thought if it.).
And good luck on those New Year’s Resolutions!
If this post was useful, or you have some constructive feedback, please lemme know via mail or elephant below. Feel free to mention or ping me on @awws on mastodon or email me at hola@wakatara.com .
And Happy New Year!