The beginning of the new year makes you look at your life and try to make some changes. Unfortunately, such New Year’s resolutions are notoriously difficult to stick to. While there are plenty of tips to help you achieve your New Year’s resolutions, you can benefit from apps that help you choose the right resolutions to stick to.
Some apps will help you determine your goals and resolutions, guiding you to find what matters and where you’re failing. Others will make sure you are focused on taking the steps you want to take and reaching your goals.
Most New Year’s resolution ideas are predictable. That’s one of the reasons we keep doing them yearly (and failing). But maybe some ideas you have yet to explore could snowball into other areas of our lives. For example, spitting out chores fairly could improve your relationship with your spouse or teach your children personal responsibility.
The nonprofit National Pubic Radio has featured more than 40 achievable New Year’s resolutions supported by their Life Kit guides. Filter them by category, or select the surprise me button to choose a random skill to upgrade. Every resolution meets the calculator and calendar test: you can measure it and set a deadline.
NPR is known for its unbiased coverage of news and culture, so you can trust the guides to point you in the right direction.
2. visualize habit (Web): See Composite of Small Efforts
Most New Year’s resolutions fail because the goals become overwhelming. We look at the end instead of walking the road because we underestimate the power of small daily steps. Visualize Habit is a nifty website that helps you imagine how mini-habits can worsen over time.
The habit calculator will prevent you from setting unrealistic goals. In the first step, choose a habit from the grid. Then, use the calculator to enter how many minutes you’ll spend on that habit during the week. For bad habits like smoking or drinking, you must provide the calculator with the amounts you consume. On the final screen, the calculator will tell you how far your efforts will take you in one year, five years, or 10 years.
Small steps add up throughout the year, and the results can be amazing. For example, you can write a book in a year if you write for 30 minutes a day. Of course, the results are based on averages and may not be precise. But you can make a goal in the future seem realistic.
3. letter to yourself (Web): Promises for your future self
Imagine writing to a future version of yourself. What would you tell him or her about your aspirations? While you can send a letter to the future with FutureMe, Letter to Yourself does it differently. When you decide on the date, the site will send you a physical letter, not an email. Plus, the UK-based company publishes letters around the world so you can write to yourself (or someone else) from anywhere.
The entire process is automated and all messages are encrypted. The site says it charges $4.99 for each letter you want to send. This price is not affected by the length of the letter or the country of delivery. Letters can be approximately 2,000 words or about five pages long.
When you evaluate yourself, you tend to be a bit lenient. If you boil everything down to real numbers, you might have a fairer, more objective view of yourself. How do you do that? Give it a try with Make Yourself Great Again.
This app asks you where you are spending your time. The activities are divided into distractions and investments. Distractions include things like social media, watching TV, going out, commuting to work, etc. Investments include exercising, time with family/friends, learning new skills, etc. Then you can add your other distractions and investments to the equation.
For each aspect, add how many hours a week you spend doing it. Again, a rough estimate is fine, and the distractions have an average human time for each activity.
Once you’re done, you’ll get a snapshot of how much time you spend on distractions versus investments. The multiplier can be a bit jarring at times, but it will help you know where to switch.
5. rising (iOS): Create Nanohabits
There are some well-designed free habit trackers on mobile game stores. Onrise is one of them, and it’s a simple app that doesn’t overwhelm you from the first touch. Keeping this simplicity at its core, the habit tracker app wants you to start slow. First, take a habit and break it down to the smallest possible unit. Then optionally set a reminder and start marking them. Finally, Onrise also has little reward icons that show up automatically when you hit streaks. Use them as prompts to set up a reward system for yourself.
Onrise also includes a handy Pomodoro timer and a space for journaling. This helps you combine your nano habits with the Pomodoro sprint approach and finally a journal to jot down any thoughts or plans. Onrise may not be suitable for those who like more personalized options. But if you want something to bookmark on your home screen widget and get back to your goals, then this free app is for you.
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Applications of habits to fulfill resolutions
With these apps, you will find different methods to set and stick to your resolutions. They are the best to start a new year, but that does not mean that you cannot use them during the rest of the year. Use any of these to get a boost whenever you want to change for the better.