Let An App Make Your New Year Resolutions Stick!

Anyone can make a New Year’s resolution, but whether or not they’re able to keep it is another story. Each year, you hear people resolve to do a familiar set of things in the next twelve months: read more, eat less, and exercise daily are common, time-tested goals. But what’s the best way to ensure that these goals stick, instead of just falling by the wayside come February?

The Apps To Make Your New Year Resolutions Stick

The good news is that nowadays there are a handful of new apps available specifically for the purpose of helping you reach your goal. This may just seem like a gimmick or a way to scam you out of a few bucks, but in reality apps like this can be very helpful. There is a great deal of research that shows that “game theory” can be used to increase the chances of meeting a goal. That is, by taking a somewhat difficult, incremental task (like breaking or establishing a new habit) and turning it into a game or trackable task, humans are more likely to stick with it if they can see themselves progressing.

Gamification To The Rescue

As a contributor to Forbes put it, gamification is “fantastic for short-term goals and for initially supporting the learning of a new skill. The goal is to create intrinsic motivation for your team and the above system, combined with deeper elements of gamification, will sustain long-term goals and stretching beyond the basic reward incentive system.” Luckily for those making New Year’s resolutions, there are a number of apps which gamify mundane tasks and habits. So whether you want to stop drinking in January, start writing your novel, or sort out your disastrous online security once and for all, there’s an app for you in 2017.

The Top Apps For 2017

Going dry: So, you overindulged over the holiday season and have now resolved to take a calendar month off of booze. Easier said than done, but if you track your progress with an app, you’ll be more likely to stick out the month. The UK charity Alcohol Concern has made a handy app which helps you track how much money you’re saving, calories you’re not ingesting, and weight you’re losing by staying off the booze. By focusing on these rewards—rather than that glass of wine you’re missing—it helps you stay on track to meet your goal.
Page views: If you’re keen to up the number of books you read this year, simply assembling a pile of unread titles on your nightstand probably isn’t going to do the trick. The app Bookout will help you monitor and track your progress as well as set goals for your reading repertoire. The best part is that the social function adds a status-based incentive to your reading, so you can brag to your followers when you’ve finished reading yet another classic novel.
Multiple goals: If you’ve set multiple goals for the year or perhaps would like to establish a few new small habits every day, then Streaks is the app for you. It helps you keep track of up to six daily tasks, giving you the incentive of that “feel good” feeling once you’ve ticked them off. Sometimes a five-minute-a-day habit is all it takes to establish before you’re on to bigger things.
Get off the couch: If you’ve dusted off your running shoes and are finally resolving to get off the couch more, don’t aim high with the goal of running a marathon by March. Instead, use C25K’s pre-made programs to get you running a 5k race by the end of February. Manageable, attainable, and trackable goals are always going to have a higher success rate than a simple vow to “run every two days.”