Habit-tracking glossary: streak, cue, chain and more

Habit advice is full of jargon borrowed from psychology and self-help books. Here's a plain-language glossary of the terms that come up most, each with a short definition and a concrete example, so the rest of the reading makes sense.

The core loop

• Cue (or trigger): the thing that starts a habit. It can be a time, a place, a feeling, or another action. Example: your alarm going off is the cue to drink a glass of water.
• Routine (or action): the behaviour itself — the habit you actually do, such as the ten-minute walk after lunch.
• Reward: the payoff that tells your brain the habit was worth repeating. It can be external (a filled square on your grid) or internal (feeling calmer after a walk).
• Craving: the anticipation of the reward that pulls you toward the routine. You don't crave the run; you crave how you feel afterward.

Tracking terms

• Streak: the number of consecutive days you completed a habit without missing. A run of unbroken days.
• Chain: the visual version of a streak — the unbroken line of marked days you're trying not to break. 'Don't break the chain.'
• Contribution grid: a calendar of small squares, one per day, that fill in when you complete a habit — the GitHub-style layout Everfield uses so a month of effort reads as a block of colour.
• Never miss twice: the rule that one missed day is fine but two in a row is the start of quitting. The single most useful habit rule there is.

Design terms

• Habit stacking: attaching a new habit to an existing one so the old habit becomes the cue. 'After I brush my teeth, I floss.'
• Keystone habit: a habit that pulls other good habits along with it. Regular exercise often nudges people toward better sleep and eating without extra effort.
• Implementation intention: a specific plan of when and where a habit will happen. 'I will meditate at 7am in the kitchen.' Far more effective than 'meditate more.'
• Two-minute rule: shrinking a new habit to a version you can finish in two minutes, so starting is nearly effortless. 'Read one page' rather than 'read a chapter.'

Motivation terms

• Loss aversion: the tendency to feel a loss more strongly than an equal gain. It's why breaking a long streak feels so bad, and why streaks motivate us.
• Identity-based habit: a habit framed around who you want to be rather than what you want to achieve. 'I'm someone who trains,' not 'I want to get fit.'
• Friction: how hard or easy a behaviour is to start. You reduce friction for good habits and add it for bad ones.
• Temptation bundling: pairing something you want to do with something you should do — the good podcast only during the workout.