How I Automate My Daily Accountability (0-1-2 System)

What you'll build

The simplest automation I've shown - and a good first one if Make.com-style builders have felt intimidating. Every morning (or night, your call) an email lands in your inbox with a Google Form link. The form asks three questions about your day, each scored 0, 1, or 2. Responses flow into a Google Sheet that totals your days, flags which ones counted as real progress, and rolls everything into a weekly rating - so you know, at a glance, whether you're actually getting enough work done. As my own sheet showed on camera: I had not been.

My three criteria: Learn (how much did I learn), Build (did I build something - an automation, a voice agent), and Business (cold emails, cold calls, demos). Yours can be anything - this is a template.

What you'll need

A Gmail account
Google Forms + Google Sheets (free)
An automation tool that can send a scheduled email - I use a single Gmail node, nothing else

Step 1: Create the Google Form

Head to Google Forms and add your questions - three works well. Each one gets answered with a 0, 1, or 2. The scale that keeps me honest: a 2 means I made real, tangible progress in that area today. Not "thought about it" - did it.

Step 2: Link responses to a Google Sheet

In the form, go to Responses → Link to Sheet. That creates a new Google Sheet and every form submission flows in automatically.

Step 3: Add the scoring formulas

On top of the raw responses, my sheet adds a few columns (the exact formulas are on screen in the video - pause and copy):

Total - the day's three scores summed
Valid day - a day counts as valid if I scored a 2 in at least one of the three criteria. That's the bar for "real progress happened today."
Week ISO - a week-number formula so days group into weeks

Then a weekly summary tab averages each week: total learn, total build, total business, valid days, and a weekly rating based on the average daily score:

Below 3.5        → Needs review
3.5 - 4.5        → Acceptable
Above 4.5        → Strong

I also keep two extra sheets spelling out exactly what each criterion means - so I can't lie to myself about what a 2 is.

Step 4: Build the email automation

One node. In your automation tool, add a Gmail → Send an Email node:

Set the schedule - your timezone, whatever time you want the nudge
Connect your Gmail
Set the recipient (you)
In the body: a short reminder line plus the Google Form link

That's the entire automation.

Step 5: Make it yours

Swap the questions for whatever you're actually trying to stay consistent on - MCAT or LSAT study hours, habits like journaling or reading, hitting your macros. The structure doesn't change.

Could you just open the sheet every night and type numbers in? Sure. The reason the email matters is the reminder - it's one extra step between you and quietly skipping the habit. If you've read Atomic Habits, James Clear's point is to create the least friction possible when solidifying a habit. A form link waiting in your inbox is about as low-friction as it gets.

Hope it helps.

Resources

Google Forms: https://forms.google.com
Google Sheets: https://sheets.google.com
My free skills repo: https://github.com/austinpeechatt/creator-skills