7 Reasons Why You Should Use a Punch Card On Yourself

First of all, when I say punch card I really mean those little loyalty cards you get for stores where you buy X number of coffee/pants/books and you get the Xth free. (I know these are slowly being replaced by online point systems but you get my gist.)

For stores, the idea is to keep you loyal to the store and reward you for continuing to buy from them.

SO here are the 7 reasons why you can use them for your own goals and habits:

1. Visual Tracking

   • We are tangible creatures - we generally need to see/touch/smell/taste to believe! SO by creating a physical card, we are providing ourselves with the proof that we need to do something and we can see the progress toward our goal physically.

2. Breaks it Down

   • It can be easy to say that you would like to lose 2 Kilograms, but we know that there are likely multiple steps that need to occur before that happens - we aren’t just going to magically take it off! So what do we do? We break that goal down into the things we think will help move us in that direction. Punch Cards are essentially a visual representation of those broken down steps - we can see that we need to run 5 times and then we can reward ourselves with a new book for doing it!

3. Rewarding

   • Rewarding ourselves after doing something creates a positive relationship to that habit and helps to encourage us to continue to do the habit! So by rewarding ourselves for doing the steps we broke down, then we are more likely to continue to do the thing we set out to do!

4. Progress Over Perfection

   • While visual tracking helps us believe, tracking the progress physically by punching out a hole or initialing something, allows us to track the progress over the perfection. It essentially helps us stay on track and gives us mini-rewards before we get the big reward we have planned for the end!

5. Loyalty

   • We don’t want to let ourselves down and we want that reward. So this creates loyalty to the activity - just as it creates loyalty to a store.

6. Creativity

   • Let’s be honest, making something fun can make it 10x easier to do! So getting to hole punch your card for cleaning the bathroom is so much better than doing nothing for cleaning the bathroom.

7. Cue

   • Similar to the idea of tracking progress over perfection, we can physically see the card. So it therefore serves as a cue or reminder to do the activity we set out to do. This reminder is just as important as the reward in habit cycles because we are reminded to do it, we do it and then we reward ourselves - without the reminder, we are less likely to consistently do it!

SO there you have it! 7 reasons why you can use a punch card on yourself! While a lot of these overlap, you can see how their intermingling can create a powerful reminder for our goals - just as it can for your purchases!

And if you want to learn more, I am hosting a punch card party workshop October 21st 2025! I will review this and more before we dive into creating our very own watercolour punch cards! (Link to register)