How to chart a Notion habit tracker

Set up the tracker

A chart reads properties, so the tracker needs:

• A date property for the day.
• One checkbox property per habit, for example Workout, Reading and Journal.
• Optional, and used below: a formula property, here called Done, that adds up the ticked boxes for the day and returns a number. Notion’s formula documentation covers the syntax.

If your tracker has one row per check-in instead, with a select property for the habit and one checkbox for done, the ChartOmodo routes below still work: chart the checkbox and add a filter on the habit.

Route 1: one chart inside Notion

Notion’s Free plan includes 1 chart: “If you're on a Free plan, you can create one chart, and if you're on a paid plan, you can create unlimited charts.” For a habit tracker, that one chart can be a bar or line chart with the date on the X axis and the sum of Done as the value, so each bar shows how many habits you kept that day.

This follows Notion’s written rules. A date is not on the list of properties kept off an axis, and a formula is only kept off when it returns a list; Done returns one number. Notion’s chart help page even uses days as its example of the point limit: “Charts can only display up to 200 groups and 50 subgroups at a time (for example, 200 days on the X-axis).” It does not document which periods a date axis can be grouped by, so check the axis options in your workspace for a weekly view. We have not tested this route in a real workspace.

Notion’s chart types are “Vertical bar chart, Horizontal bar chart, Line chart, Donut chart or Number chart”. A calendar heat map is not among them. If one bar or line chart shows what you want to see, stay in Notion.

Route 2: weekly bars in ChartOmodo

ChartOmodo is a Notion integration: it reads the tracker through Notion’s API, draws the chart, and you paste it back into a Notion page as an embed block. Bar charts start on the Free plan and grouping by week on Free, and the Free plan holds 5 charts.

1. Create an account, open Data sources and connect Notion. On Notion’s screen, share only the habit tracker.
2. Open the tracker in the builder and choose Bar.
3. Set X-axis (category) to the date property and Date grouping to Week.
4. Set Y-axis (value) to one habit’s checkbox and Aggregation to Sum. ChartOmodo reads a ticked box as 1 and an empty one as 0, so with one row per day each bar is the number of days that week you did the habit, from 0 to 7.
5. Copy the embed link, type /embed on your tracker page and paste it.

On the Free plan a chart draws 1 series, so make one chart per habit. Starter draws up to 3 series per chart: pick several checkboxes under Y-axis (value) and each habit gets its own bars. To see all habits as one number per week, chart Done with Sum instead.

Route 3: a calendar heat map

A calendar draws every day as a square, coloured by its value, with one block per year; a short embed keeps the most recent years. Calendar charts start on the Pro plan, and grouping by day on Pro.

1. In the builder, choose Calendar.
2. Set X-axis (category) to the date property and Date grouping to Day.
3. Set Y-axis (value) to one habit’s checkbox with Sum, or to Done with Sum to see every habit in one calendar.
4. Embed it the same way as the bar chart.

With one checkbox, a ticked day is 1 and an unticked day is 0. With grouping by day, a day between your first and last row that has no row at all also counts as 0, so a gap in the tracker looks the same as a missed day. With Done, the colour of each square follows the number of habits kept that day.

Which route to pick

• Notion’s own chart when one bar or line chart is enough and you would rather not connect another service.
• Weekly bars when you want to see, over months, whether a habit is holding.
• The calendar when you care about single days: runs of ticked days, weekends, the week you were ill.

The habit tracker example shows a calendar and a per-habit bar chart drawn from a sample tracker, and you can hover them without an account. ChartOmodo charts refresh on their own: each re-reads the tracker on a timer set by your plan, sooner when Notion reports an edit, so a box ticked this morning shows up after the next refresh. For a running count of check-ins, see the cumulative chart guide; for every documented limit of Notion’s charts, see Notion chart limits and what to do about each.