Setup is where cycles are won or lost. A poorly set-up cycle can't be rescued by tracking well. This tool walks you through it.
A habit cycle is a bounded run at a habit — 30 days by default, with an explicit start,
end, and exit condition. Setup decides almost everything downstream: a habit that's too
big collapses; a habit with no exit condition drifts into a streak you're afraid to break.
The planner asks six questions, in order. Answer them and you have a cycle that's ready to
run. The longer version of why these are the right six is on
setting up a cycle.
Six steps to a shaped cycle
01
Step 1: What habit?
Pick the habit you want to run. Free text, or choose from the library. Smaller than feels reasonable is almost always the right move at the start.
02
Step 2: Cycle length
30 days is the default. Long enough for signal, short enough to stay kind. Shorter cycles work for stamina-testing habits; longer cycles only if the habit needs more runway.
03
Step 3: Why this habit now?
The goal it serves. The life context. One sentence is enough — but write it. The why is what holds the cycle together when the daily action gets boring.
04
Step 4: Success criteria
What does doing it look like? Be concrete. "Five mornings a week" not "more often." If the criteria is fuzzy at setup it will be unscoreable at the review.
05
Step 5: Exit condition
What ends the cycle? A date, an event, a graduation threshold. Defined here so you don't improvise it at the end. Without an exit condition, a cycle drifts into open-ended tracking — which is what the method exists to avoid.
06
Step 6: Habit context
A one-line note next to each notable day. Worth doing if the habit really matters; skip it if the cycle is light. The column accumulates: by review time, patterns are visible that weren't visible day to day.
Three worked examples
Three cycles, planned end to end. The first two have library entries you can pre-fill
from; the third shows the free-text path for habits the library doesn't cover.
The first hour of the day belongs to something else. The phone has been winning that
hour for months.
Success criteria
Charging cable lives in the kitchen. An alarm clock replaces the phone alarm. No
exceptions for "just checking".
Exit condition
Review on day 30. Graduate if the morning has reshaped. End if the cost is higher
than the benefit. Change the time if 9am turned out to be the wrong line.
Habit context
Notes on the days it broke. Why did I unlock the phone? A real call, or the reflex?
Example three · custom (not in the library)
Daily exercise (any kind)
Habit
Twenty minutes of movement, daily. Bodyweight circuit, walk, swim, bike — whatever
fits the day.
Cycle length
30 days.
Why this, now
The daily threshold is what matters; the variety is what makes it survivable. The
same routine four times a week stops being a routine.
Success criteria
Twenty minutes of anything that raises a sweat or moves the joints. Stairs count.
Tired walks count.
Exit condition
Review on day 30. Continue if the floor has held. Change if twenty minutes is the
wrong floor. Replace with a structured programme if the body is asking for it.
Habit context
Notes on the days that broke: soreness, weather, illness, late meeting. By the end
I'll know which excuses are signal and which are noise.
Common questions
What's a good first habit?
Smaller than feels reasonable. Five minutes of meditation, a morning glass of water,
two minutes of tidying, ten pages of reading. The point of the first cycle is to learn
the shape of running one — not to fix your life. The habit library has 140 starting points sized for cycles.
How long should a cycle be?
30 days is the default. It's long enough for signal — you'll see what the habit does
to your week, your sleep, your mood — and short enough to stay kind. Shorter cycles
(14 or 21 days) suit stamina tests and short experiments. Longer cycles (60–90 days)
are rare and usually only justified if the habit truly needs the runway.
What if I miss a day?
You note it and continue. A break in a cycle is a single missed day, not a failure of
the cycle. The streak resets to zero in your tracker; the cycle continues to its exit
condition. The break becomes a one-line note in the habit context column — most
reviews look closely at break patterns. The streak wave covers why missed days don't end a cycle the way they end a streak.
How do I know when to stop a habit?
You don't decide in the moment. You decide at the end of the cycle, with the data and
the habit context column in front of you. The four canonical decisions are continue (same shape, again), change (adjust the bar, easier or harder), replace (same goal, new habit), and end (graduated, served its purpose, or wasn't the
right fit). The cycle check-in is the structured review that gets you to one.
Can I run more than one cycle at a time?
Yes — and most practitioners do, after the first one. The simplest pattern is one new
cycle plus one or two background habits already automatic enough to not need
attention. Avoid running three new cycles at once at the start: the cost of setup and
review goes up linearly while attention stays finite.
What comes after a cycle?
Another cycle, usually shaped by what the last one taught you. The check-in turns the data into a decision. The decision turns into the next cycle's setup. That loop
is what the method is — and what makes a tracking practice last past the first crash.
Print your plan
Until the interactive planner ships, the template below is the same shape you'll fill in —
and you can use it now. Copy it into a notes app, write it on a card, or use your
browser's print menu (Cmd/Ctrl + P) to print just the card on a single A4 sheet.
Cycle plan
__________________________
Date started · ____ / ____ / ____
01 What habit?
02 Cycle length
03 Why this, now
04 Success criteria
05 Exit condition
06 Habit context plan
Why these six steps
The six fields are the smallest set that produces a runnable cycle. Drop one and the cycle
either drifts (no exit condition), can't be reviewed (no success criteria), or never
starts (no why). The longer version is on setting up a cycle; the framework around it lives on the method page.