I’ve always solved problems by mapping them.
Lists, sketches, spreadsheets that slowly start looking like personality tests.
It’s how I process the world and how I anchor myself when life starts feeling slightly too loud.
So when I stumbled across a random TikTok video about something called Operation 66, it pulled me in immediately. Sixty-six days of small wellness habits, tracked one moment at a time. No pressure. No hustle. Just momentum.
After flirting with burnout one too many times, that felt like the kind of structure I actually needed. So I started the challenge.
And naturally, I opened a spreadsheet.
What Atomic Habits Taught Me
To support this 66-day journey, I started reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, and one idea landed with annoying accuracy:
You don’t rise to the level of your goals; you fall to the level of your systems.
If my system was going to hold me for sixty-six days, it needed to feel good, not clinical.
Something visual. Something that looked like progress, not punishment.
Something playful enough to keep me curious.
I started simple: a basic habit tracker.
But the more I used it, the more it felt like I was logging tasks instead of building habits.
I wanted joy. I wanted something that grew with me.
The YouTube Spark
In my search for inspiration, I found a beautiful tutorial by Designs by Darowan, who created a sunflower-themed habit tracker that grows each time you tick something off. Her approach was cute, clever and irresistible to my sunflower-shaped heart. If you want to learn her method step by step, you can watch the tutorial here: Designs by Darowan – Google Sheets Sunflower Habit Tracker Tutorial.
I wasn’t trying to duplicate her full design. I had already started shaping my own Operation 66 tracker, so I used her ideas as inspiration and adapted her methods to fit the structure I had in mind.
The Gemini Detour
The Darowan used MidJourney for her plant graphics. I didn’t have that.
But I did have Google’s Gemini.
I experimented with it, asked it for plant-style icons for a habit tracker, and at first, it gave me SVG renders that weren’t quite right.
So I asked for the raw SVG code instead.
From there, I used a code editor to manually edit the shapes and colours, adjusted a few details, and converted everything to PNG files for the sheet.
It turned into a tiny creative playground.
Design meets logic. Curiosity meets control.
That little detour reminded me why I love building systems from scratch. There is something strangely grounding about taking an idea, breaking it open, and shaping it into something that tickles your brain in all the ways YOU like.
The Result: Momentum That Feels Like Mine
I now have two versions of this tracker.
The 66-day version that I use for Operation 66.
And a simpler 31-day template that sits closer to the tutorial’s design.
The 66-day sheet is my favourite, though.
It holds the messy bits, the slow days, the creative tweaks. It looks like something only I would build, part wellness tool, part digital garden, part personal experiment.
And that’s the point.
The system didn’t have to be perfect.
It just had to be mine.
Somewhere in the process, I realised I wasn’t tracking habits.
I was tracking momentum.
Tiny signals that I was still here, still trying, still choosing myself in small ways.
That matters more than any perfectly structured plan.
If You Want to Try It
If you’re curious:
- You can download my Momentum Tracker (free, or pay what you want)
- You can watch the original tutorial that inspired the gamification
- Or you can remix everything and make something new
The only rule is this:
Build a system that feels like you.
Something that doesn’t demand perfection, only presence.
Sometimes structure becomes sustainable when it starts to feel like play.
