Mini Loops

A habit tracker for people who keep quitting

Updated 19 August 2026

Short answer

If you have installed several habit apps and stopped using all of them, the cause is almost always one of three things: too many habits at once, a size set for a good day, or a counter that made one missed day expensive.

All three are faults in the plan rather than facts about you, and all three are fixable without more resolve. Changing app helps only if the new one is a different shape from the last.

The three causes

Too many at once. Almost everyone starts a habit app by filling in the list, because the list is there. Eight habits each with a 60% chance of surviving three months gives you about a one-in-forty chance of keeping all eight, and in practice they do not fail independently: the same difficult week takes all of them at once, which reads as a personal collapse rather than as arithmetic. The numbers are here.

A size set by an optimist. Plans are made on a good afternoon, for a person who will be alert and unhurried. Then a normal bad day arrives — a delayed train, a bad night, something wrong at four o'clock — and the plan has nothing in it that fits that day. Not a smaller version, not a floor. Just the full thing or nothing, and nothing wins. How small it should be.

A counter that priced the missed day. In the field research, missing a single day had no measurable effect on habit formation. In an app with a run of consecutive days on the front screen, it costs you something visible. Abandoning the attempt is a reasonable response to something that now feels spoiled, and that is a design decision rather than a fact about habits. More on that.

What to change before installing anything

  1. Pick one habit. Not the most important one, necessarily — the one most likely to survive. The others wait, and they are not cancelled.
  2. Halve the size, then halve it again. Land somewhere you could do on the worst day of the month. It will feel too small. That is the correct feeling.
  3. Name the bad-day version out loud, now. Before you need it. A version improvised during a bad day is a version that reads as giving up.
  4. Attach it to an event, not a time. Something that happens whatever the day is like. Choosing the moment.
  5. Turn off anything that counts. If your app cannot stop counting, that is a reason to change app.

The thing nobody tells you

Restarting is the skill. Not persistence, not consistency — the ability to come back quickly and at a smaller size after every disruption. Illness, travel, deadlines and bad weeks are not exceptions to be planned around; they are most weeks, and a method that only works when nothing goes wrong is not a method.

Someone who has restarted five times and is still doing the thing is in a better position than someone in their first uninterrupted month. That is worth believing before the next disruption rather than after it. How to restart.

Mini Loops was built for exactly this case: one habit, a named bad-day version, and nothing that counts. See it on the App Store

What a different shape of app looks like

If you are going to try another one, the things worth checking are not features but behaviours:

Where Mini Loops sits

It holds one habit and will not let you add a second until the first is steady. Setup asks for the small version before the first hard day. The daily check-in is two taps and includes what got in the way, from fixed answers. When the same obstacle recurs it says what it noticed and proposes one change, which you accept or decline.

There is no streak, counter, percentage or score anywhere in it. It is £39.99 a year with one week free, or £7.99 a month, on iPhone and iPad. If what you want is a dashboard of several routines, this is the wrong app and one of the other models will suit you better.

Common questions

Why do I keep quitting habit trackers?

Usually one of three things: you started several habits at once, the size was set for a good day with no smaller version for a bad one, or a counter made a missed day feel expensive. All three are faults in the plan rather than in you.

Is there a habit app for people with no discipline?

Discipline is not the variable. When something is not happening, the cause is nearly always that the plan is wrong about your day: too big, wrong moment, or no version for the days that fall apart. An app that proposes changes to the plan is more use than one that asks for more effort.

Should I try a different habit app or fix my plan first?

Fix the plan first: one habit, a size you could manage on your worst day, an event-based cue and a named bad-day version. Changing app only helps if the new one is a genuinely different shape from the last one.

How many habits should I start with if I have failed before?

One. Habits fail together rather than separately, because the same bad week disrupts all of them, and each additional habit needs its own reliable daily cue.

Does missing a day mean I have to start over?

No. In the field research a single missed day had no measurable effect on habit formation. Nothing resets and nothing is owed. What matters is not letting one missed day become a run of them.

What makes Mini Loops different from the tracker I deleted?

It holds one habit rather than a list, asks for a bad-day version before you need it, records what got in the way, and proposes a change when a pattern appears. It has no streaks, counters or scores of any kind.