Many of you have habits you want to build. It could be flossing daily, or updating your blog, or reflecting on your week. The problem is, it’s hard to remember week-in and week-out to do those things. And if you don’t do them often, they don’t have a chance to become habits. People always say that you need three to four weeks to build a new habit, and that around the two week mark, people often forget about the habits they’re trying to build.

Here’s how Astrid can help. First, create a list called “HABIT”. It’s all caps to signify that it’s IMPORTANT.

Next, fill it with your habits. The key is to make them repeat after completion, meaning that when you complete the task, the next due date is set based on when you finished it. This way, even if you miss a couple days, Astrid won’t miss a beat. There’s no sense in dwelling in the past, after all.

The next step is to make a shortcut on your home screen to your HABITS list. Just go to the lists screen, long-press on HABITS, and “Create shortcut”. You’ll end up with something like this:

Here’s the trick. Every day, just open up HABITS, and do whatever Astrid tells you.. That way, you’re only going to have to build one habit, instead of however many you are trying to build. It’s easy, and it’s worked wonders for me.

As an added bonus, as an Astrid.com user, you can make your habits public and post them to Facebook or Twitter. This is a great way for others to not only keep you accountable, but give you ideas and tips for being smarter about your habits. For example, when I ran low on blog ideas, my friends gave me some tips and ideas:

Super helpful, right? With training, you too can become a productivity master! Just kidding, it’s really easy. Make a list, make some repeating tasks, add it to your home-screen to check every day, and share some of those habits to keep yourself accountable.

Have productivity tools helped you build habits? Tell me how! And then, please share widely to help Astrid help more people build healthy habits.