A habit tracker for dads who keep putting themselves last

The specific shape of this drift

There is usually no moment. Ask a man in his mid-thirties when he stopped training and he cannot tell you — there was no last session, just a fortnight that quietly became a season. And the thing that goes first is almost always the thing that was only his: the five-a-side, the running, the guitar, the hour on a Saturday morning. It does not go because anyone took it. It goes because it is the one item on the list with nobody else's name against it, and it is therefore the only one that can be moved without a conversation.

Then comes the sentence. "After this project calms down." "When she's sleeping through." "Once the extension's finished." Every one of them is reasonable on its own. Strung end to end they run for six or seven years, and the thing they were deferring stops being a plan and becomes a story you tell about who you used to be.

The reason it runs that long is that nothing is measuring it. Through the pregnancy and the early years there is a great deal of medical attention in the house and almost none of it is pointed at you. So the first honest reading often arrives sideways — bloodwork taken for an unrelated reason, cholesterol up, triglycerides up, glucose creeping. Markers with no symptoms until there are very loud ones. By then the drift has a five-year head start, entirely undocumented.

The man who built this app hit 103.6 kg at 182 cm and had exactly that bloodwork, and none of it landed. What landed was his five-year-old telling him, plainly, that dad had a big belly — not cruelly, because children that age are simply accurate. You can argue with a scale and you can quibble with a doctor about reference ranges. You cannot argue with your own child describing you. That is the origin of this product, and the whole thing is written up in the free book and left open on the building-in-public page, gaps included.

One more part, and it is the one that does not go on landing pages: you have probably not said any of this out loud to anybody. It stays private, which is precisely the condition under which nothing gets measured and nothing changes.

What this actually gives you

Numbers, not just ticks

Alongside habits there is a number-target goal type: a start value, where you are now, a target and a unit, drawn as a progress curve. Weight, waist, resting heart rate, a lift, hours of sleep, money saved. This is the part that matters most here, because the reason the last few years went unnoticed is that nothing was recording them — the fix is a measurement, not a mood.

The hour you already have, pinned to specific days

Schedule a habit for Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday and the other four days are not part of the run — they are skipped, not counted against you. Three honest evenings beat seven aspirational ones, and naming the days turns "I should train more" into a commitment concrete enough to defend when something else wants the slot.

A bad month does not erase the year

There is no health bar, no character that dies, no score that resets. Unscheduled days are skipped, a pause window covers a work trip or an illness without breaking the run, and a genuine miss simply earns nothing. Forgiving streaks are not unusual any more — several habit apps do a version of it — but it is the minimum this has to get right for anyone restarting after years off.

Five habit modes, including the ones that are a "don't"

Build (do the thing), break (a day counts when there is no record — which is how "nothing after nine" works without logging anything), limit (stay under a cap), challenge (a finite count, like 30 of 30), and deadline (every day until a date). Most comeback lists are a mix of do and don't, and only one of those needs you to open an app.

A line a day, if you want one

There is a journal with a mood scale and tags, and a journal habit that ticks itself when you save an entry. Written reflection has an image problem among men who think it is soft; the version that survives contact with a real week is one line attached to something you were already doing.

Evidence you can look at rather than a testimonial

The maker's own habit grid is public — real days, real gaps, no retouching. There are no user counts or star ratings on this page because we do not have honest ones to show you, and one open grid is worth more than a number nobody can check.

A first evening that goes somewhere

About half an hour, and ideally tonight rather than Monday. Monday is where this kind of thing goes to die.

1. Write the deferral down in its own words

Whatever your version of "after this project calms down" is, write the actual sentence out. Then put a date against the thing it has been deferring — not a resolution, a date. The sentence is doing more damage than the missing training is, and it only loses its grip once it is outside your head and legible.

2. Start from a number you can watch move

Enter one or two measurable things as number targets with a real start value: weight, waist, a lift, hours slept, steps. If you have had bloodwork in the last year, take a marker from it. You are not trying to reach the target this month. You are trying to end the stretch in which nothing was being recorded, so that in three months there is something to read other than a feeling.

3. Take back one hour and put it in the calendar as three

Name the one thing that used to be yours and schedule its smallest version on three specific weekdays. Twenty minutes three times survives a bad week; an hour once does not. And "Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday" is something you can hold a line on when work asks for the evening — "more exercise" is not.

4. Give it a horizon rather than a deadline

Lally and colleagues put the median time to near-automatic at 66 days, with a range from 18 to 254 — so pick a checkpoint two or three months out and expect the first month to feel like admin rather than progress. The horizon exists to stop you re-judging the entire project every Sunday night, which is the actual failure mode.

Things this is not

Worth knowing before you spend the evening on it rather than after.

• It is not medical advice and it does not read your results. It stores numbers you type in and draws the line between them. If a marker is off, that is a conversation with a doctor, and this page is not going to imply otherwise.
• There are no push notifications. You can save a reminder time and days against a habit and the app will show it to you, but nothing pings your phone. Reminders here are a schedule you set, not an alert you receive.
• There is no community, no leaderboard and nobody to compare yourself against. That is deliberate: most people reading this would rather not perform a comeback in front of an audience. The only public element is the maker's own grid, and that is his choice, not a requirement.
• It is a web app you use in a browser and add to your home screen — no store listing, no watch app. It works the same on a personal phone, an old tablet and a work laptop.
• The app is free — unlimited habits and life areas, no card. The AI Coach runs on your own OpenAI or Anthropic key, so the only bill is the one your provider sends you.

Questions worth asking first

How is this different from your page for parents?

They target different failures. /for/parents is about the day that is not yours — the interruptions, the sick child, a calendar you do not control — and its setup is about scheduling honestly around that. This page is about a day you largely do control, in which everything personal keeps getting moved down a queue that never empties, and its setup starts from measurement instead. Same app, different problem. If both descriptions fit you, take the scheduling advice from the parents page and the number targets from this one.

I genuinely don't have the time. Where is it supposed to come from?

Setup is about half an hour once, and the daily part is under a minute. But the honest answer is that for most people reading this the hour does exist in the evening and is going somewhere else, and this is a tool for making that visible rather than a tool for manufacturing hours. If your evenings really are not yours — night feeds, a second job, caring for a parent — the parents page is the better read, and neither page is going to pretend a tracker solves it.

What should I track first?

One or two numbers and one habit. The numbers exist so that the last six months stop being invisible; the habit exists so there is something to do tonight. Add one thing that is not fitness — reading, an instrument, a message to a friend you have not spoken to since the first baby — because that is usually the item that makes the whole system worth opening on a bad day.

What happens when I miss a week?

Nothing punitive. Days you did not schedule are not part of the run, a pause window covers a trip or an illness, and a real miss simply earns nothing and is there again tomorrow. Missing days is not what ends comebacks. Deciding that the miss means the whole attempt is over — and that the honest thing to do is delete the app — is what ends them.

Is it free, and what do the AI features cost?

It is free: unlimited habits and life areas, every built-in theme, no card required. The AI Coach and the theme generator run on your own OpenAI or Anthropic key — connect it in Settings and you pay your provider directly; we are not in the middle.

The story this came out of

• My five-year-old said I had a big belly
• Getting back in shape after 30, with kids
• Journaling for men who think it's dumb
• A happy me is a happy family
• For busy parents — when the problem is the day, not the queue

Sources

• Lally et al. (2010), How are habits formed
  European Journal of Social Psychology 40(6). Median 66 days to 95% of automaticity, range 18–254 — from the 39 participants whose curves fitted the model, drawn from a sample of mostly UK postgraduate students. The spread is the useful part, not the median.
• The maker's own numbers
  103.6 kg at 182 cm, and the bloodwork behind it, are his — the full account is in /blog/my-five-year-old-said-i-had-a-big-belly and the free book. His current habit grid is live on /founder with the gaps left in.