For me, the ritual of measuring progress or adherence to a desired habit is a huge help, but I find that the presentation and availability of this measurement in app form is not helpful and generally is actively harmful for progress.

Here is an example. I have lost a significant amount of weight in the past year and managed to build good exercise habits and eating habits, keep the weight off, and feel very happy with the physical shape and condition I am in.

I tried using apps like Lose It to count calories, record exercise, etc., and it did not work at all. The neurotic clawing feeling that the app was always there to get me, to demand me to check it, to obsess over my progress, pressure to share my progress on social media, etc. etc., was self-defeating.

What ended up working was I bought a cheap electronic scale from CVS and I weighed myself whenever I felt like it, and did not write down or record that number. Sometimes I would weigh myself consistently, other times I would weight myself very frequently / very sparsely. I put no pressure on myself to weigh myself every day, to record or keep track of my current weight, or anything similar.

Basically, weighing myself was like a throw-away activity. I happened to see a number on the tiny LED screen. I might remember it; I might not. Who cares. But I did make sure to check in with that scale any time I felt like it.

It was similar with counting calories. Actually, what I found worked very well here is to establish decent calorie estimates for composable food items. Know the calories in the things I usually combine for a salad. Know the calories in the pasta I buy. Know the calories in bread, condiments, sauces, basic foods.

Then when I combine them together for a meal, I can get a rough estimate of the total calories. I'm not obsessively scanning the barcode of everything I buy, but I'm also rarely ever flying blind with ingredients I can't estimate.

Same goes for exercise. Know roughly how many calories you burn walking some certain distance, or running some certain distance, or doing aerobics or calisthenics. Many people recommend keeping a fitness journal, but for me this again turned it into a pressure point, ominously looking at me from across the room, tell-tale-hearting me into feeling guilty about not working out enough.

So I started writing down the exercises I did, quickly getting a ballpark on the calories (when it wasn't obvious, like reading it off a treadmill display), and then throwing the piece of paper away. Who cares.

I made rituals out of these actions, and it started to guide me a lot. I found that it focused me on things I needed to do (e.g. skip that extra helping of food because I estimated the calories) but it didn't function like self-flagellation (e.g. obsessing over my weight in an app, or stressing out about eating something minor because I've already eaten 1,799 calories today or something).

I experienced way less ego depletion in my decision making, but still felt like I was keeping tabs on things.

I don't think this would work for everyone nor for every kind of task. For example, when I want to be more productive with writing and personal tech projects, I haven't found a great sort of "throw away" equivalent for to-do lists.

But in general, I think it's worth a try. Don't go for things that will be overbearing, ever-present, or come with a high degree of pressure. The effects of all that stuff will be counter-productive. Instead, think about what those things are, and find ways to measure them that are cheap, easy, give you only the info you need for situational decision making, and can be easily thrown away / forgotten / ignored whenever you need to.