New Year = New You. This sentiment has many individuals committing to big life changes when the calendar rolls over. However, studies show that few people manage to stick to their resolutions. Whether health, career or family-oriented, polls suggest eighty percent resolutions are abandoned by the second week of February. Want to beat the odds? If you made a personal resolution for 2019, there are some great iPhone and iPad apps that can help you stick to it.
No matter the nature of your resolution, tracking your daily behaviour via a habit app can be helpful. The simple act of “checking in” each day to see if you’ve adhered to you desired goals helps keep those goals at the forefront of your mind. Habit apps can also link you to lifestyle coaches, introduce you to a community of similar goal-setters and/or offer rewards for successful goal-keeping. There are lots of behaviour modification apps available, many of which are free. Some examples include Streaks, Habitshare, Done and Productive. Getting the most out of one will come done to figuring out what motivates you most – such as ongoing professional support, public accountability or free swag – then finding the app that offers this type of encouragement.
As for apps that specifically target your goal, again the choices abound. Here are some examples for popular resolutions:
More Exercise & Getting Fit
Whether you’re ramping up to a 10k marathon or just need to get yourself off the couch, there are many apps that can help you design an exercise regime that’s right for you and demonstrate how to perform the exercises safely and effectively. Workout Trainer by Skimble is one such option, offering thousands of workouts accompanied by audio and video instruction. Or if you’re looking for something a little more mellow, Yoga Studio offers ready-made classes between 10-60 minutes in length.
Spend Less & Save More
Consistently one of the most popular resolutions, many people hope to change their financial habits in the new year. Depending on your exact goal, there are a variety of apps available. Intuit’s Mint is a comprehensive program that claims the ability to “effortlessly manage your finances in one place.” It will create budgets, make suggestions to decrease your spending, send you alerts when bills are due and provide free credit checks. If your concern is building up savings, Mylo or Wealthsimple will round up your purchases and invest the difference according on your financial goals and comfort with risk.
Change Jobs & Advance Your Career
Whether you’re looking to change career directions entirely or just get further ahead in your current profession, January and February are the best months in many industries to apply for new jobs. Companies are working off new budgets, decision-makers are in the office and businesses may have a backlog of unfilled positions from the end of the previous year. If you’ll be job-seeking, having a LinkedIn app profile is becoming a necessary staple in many office and tech occupations. For job searching on-the-go Indeed, one of the top job-search websites, is available as an app. It aggregates searchable listings from thousands of sources. It also lets you set up email notifications for when new jobs appear in your categories of interest. If you want to review an employer before applying, Glassdoor offers employee ratings and reviews of over 600k companies worldwide.
Weight Loss & Healthier Eating
If you packed on a few too many pounds during the holidays, no doubt you’d like to lose them. Luckily today’s weight loss apps recognize that it’s about more than just restricting calories and they can be tailored to a variety of special diets, including vegan, paleo and celiac. Eat This Much, for example, is a highly customizable app that will help you plan meals and generate grocery lists according to your nutritional targets. Focused more on tracking what you’ve eaten, Lose it! boasts three easy tracking methods and will calculate your personalized daily calorie budget. On the lighter side, Plant Nanny is a cute Tamagotchi-like app that encourages you to drink more water.
Be More Organized
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the stuff you own or the things you need to do, there are apps that can help you get organized. Sortly, for example, is an inventory app that can help you label and organize your belongings so you can track expiration and warranty dates, locate rarely used items easily, simplify a move, etc. Evernote, a digital assistant app, allows users to jot down, save and share their notes and thoughts in several formats within an uncluttered interface. If scheduling is more your problem, an app like Calendars by Readdle or Routinist can help keep you on track and on time. For students, Pocket Schedule Planner can be a great tool for remembering your class schedule, assignment due dates and extracurricular activities.
Start a New Hobby
It’s 2019 so if a hobby exists, there’s an app for it! If you want to learn a language, free app offerings include Duolingo, busuu and Google Translate. If you want to take up gardening, there are apps to get you started, remind you when to water and trim, help layout your plots and so forth. People interested in digital creativity can try iMovie or Procreate. Aspiring bibliophiles should check out Goodreads, iBooks and Kindle.
Decrease Stress & Be More Mindful
Many people emerge from the holidays feeling overwhelmed, anxious or depressed, so January can be a good time to approach life with a refreshed outlook. Taking just a few minutes each day to focus on your mental health can lead to better sleep, sharper focus and healthier interpersonal relationships. Insight Timer offers more than 4,000 guided meditations from over 1,000 teachers. Stop, Breathe & Think acquaints you with the neuroscience of mindfulness and physiology of stress, before teaching you the optimum way to meditate. For a less guided experience, Calm offers sleep stories and sound session such as falling rain, fireplace and crickets.
Whatever your personal resolutions for 2019, we wish you the best of luck in keeping them! We know you can do it!
A blog by Danica Wong, Accounting Clerk at Simply Computing
