Favorite Apps: Ritual

I came across an app this week that makes a perfect companion to the Seinfeld productivity method.

It’s called Ritual.

Ritual helps you commit to your New Year’s resolutions, establish new habits, and keep track of your weight, spending, working hours, and more.

The app features a beautiful split-pane interface. On the left is a sort of linear calendar. On the right is the daily view, where you input the habits you want to track, like “Take vitamins”, “Eat healthy”, or “Exercise”.

If you complete your ritual, you check the box next to that habit. As time goes on, the calendar on the left gets filled with checkmarks to show you how many days in a row you’ve done your habit.

After you’ve been tracking for a few days, you can tap each habit to view graphs and charts of your progress.

When adding new habits, you have the option of making them “Yes/No” habits or “Number” habits. The Yes/No variety is self-explanatory: Did you work out today? Check for Yes, leave unchecked for No.

If you use a Number habit, you input the value for whatever your habit is. Say you want to do push-ups. Ritual lets you track how many you perform each day. You can also use this feature to track your weight or spending over time.

Ritual is pretty sparse in the settings department, but you can set reminders, and you can export your data via an email spreadsheet.

I won’t be using Ritual to track my expenses, as I prefer the functionality of a dedicated finance app. However, it has earned a spot on my second home screen as a way of staying focused and doing my habits every day. I was using a desk calendar for this purpose last month, but Ritual allows me to track my habits on-the-go, and I can add as many as I want. It’s simple, beautiful, and useful.

You can get Ritual for $1.99 on the App Store.

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