Got a New Year’s Resolution? There’s an App for That!

31 Dec, 2015

Want to make your New Year’s resolution last more than a week? Turns out there are plenty of apps to give you the extra motivation needed to stay the course.

Whether it’s quitting a bad habit or building a healthy new one, check out these apps to help you reach your goals.

Get a New Job

Whether you’re sick of your boss or ready for a new opportunity, there’s always a treasure trove of jobs to be found on Indeed. The popular job search site has a mobile app for iOS and Android and it provides access to millions of open jobs. Search for jobs by using filters such as location and salary.

Quit Something

Whether its quitting smoking, drinking or talking to your ex, the free “Quit That!” app will help. Users can download the app, enter one or more things they want to quit and start the clock. The app lets users also put a price on how much the habit they’re quitting costs per day. After a while, it’s obvious skipping all of those happy hours can add up to some major savings. Quit That! is available for iOS users.

Have Better Nutrition

Knowledge is power. Fooducate helps you make smarter choices about the food you eat. Scan a product barcode to get nutritional info, along with some healthy alternatives. The app also comes equipped with a tracking feature to keep tabs on your nutrition and exercise. Fooducate is free and available on iOS and Android.

Learn a LanguageNow is a great time to learn a new language. Duolingo and Babbel both offer great apps for learning a variety of different languages. It’s as easy as downloading the apps and slipping in a short lesson whenever you find some free time. Both have apps for iOS and Android. Duo Lingo has additional availability for Windows Phone users.

Sleep Better

Better sleep is a goal we often strive for, but don’t know how to achieve. With Sleep Cycle, you can make your morning wake-up routine smarter. The app analyzes your slumber by the sounds you make moving around, waking you up when you’re in the lightest sleep phase. This helps you feel more rested and relaxed when you wake up, and the optional $1.99 per year subscription to the Premium service will give you sleep trend reports so you can tell how well you’re resting throughout the night. Sleep Cycle is available for free on the App Store.

Get in Shape

The biggest rage in fitness is the seven-minute workout, which challenges your body with 12 high intensity 30-second exercises with 10 seconds of rest between each set. Who better to egg you on through this taxing exercise session than the malevolent robot, Carrot? Carrot Fit is available for $2.99 on the App Store, and includes a step counter, weight tracker, workout calendar, along with an Apple Watch companion.

Organize your Days and your Life

If you really want to become better organized, Wunderlist is a great to-do list app to help you achieve that. You can create multiple lists of tasks, along with subtasks, notes, files, and comments. For tasks that have deadlines, the app allows you to set due dates and get reminders, so you don’t forget. Wunderlist is a free download on the App Store, with in-app subscriptions to get more features.

Quit Smoking

One of the most often made New Year’s resolutions is to quit smoking, but it’s not so easy to pull this one off. With Smoke Free, you can get motivated by seeing how much money you have saved since quitting, how many cigarettes you’ve kept away from, and how many hours of your life you’ve theoretically won back by quitting smoking. Smoke Free doesn’t cost anything to download on the App Store, but there are in-app purchases to unlock daily missions and other features to help improve your chances of quitting smoking.

Drink more Water

Drinking more water is an important step to becoming more fit, and it will also contribute to better alertness and productivity. With Water Alert, you can set how much you should be drinking each day and then track your progress. The app provides you with notifications to help keep you on task with your water intake throughout the day. Water Alert is free on the App Store, with in-app purchases to remove advertisements.

Budget Money Better

We could all stand to do better at managing our finances, and Mint makes that easy. The app and Web service integrates with your bank, credit cards, and investments, helping to automatically track your spending habits and give you a complete financial picture. You can easily keep track of your spending, create a budget you can stick to, and stay up-to-date with your spending. Mint is a free download on the App Store.

 Save More Money

Stop wondering where your money goes and plan for your financial future with Mvelopes. This app uses the concept of “spending envelopes” to track your spending and create a plan for your income. To make your life as easy as possible, it syncs with your bank securely and seamlessly. Oh, and once you’re set up, you can see in just seconds the funds you have left in each virtual envelope for your customized budget categories.

Read More

Remember what it’s like to spend all day curled up with a good book? Me neither! But I still need to—and want to—keep up with my reading. That’s where an app like ReadMe! can be a lifesaver.

The app’s colorized streaming text reduces the amount you have to move your eyes so you can read more quickly. You can amp up the speed if you’re really in a hurry, or slow it down if you want a more relaxing experience. ReadMe! also allows syncing between devices and offline reading, so now there’s no excuse for not getting caught up on that pile of books you’ve been collecting.

Be More Punctual

The last resolution tool isn’t exactly an app, but it does use your smartphone to try to cure you of an annoying habit—being late. Interruptive is a Chrome extension that calls you to remind you that it’s time to hit the road for your next appointment, or that you need to get started on that project you’ve been putting off now.

Interruptive integrates nicely with Google Calendar so all you have to do is decide how much in advance you want to be reminded of important events. The service will call you then—and keep calling you every minute for five minutes—until you confirm the call. Truly annoying, but definitely hard to ignore. And honestly, it’s probably exactly what you need if you’re known for being a little more than fashionably late.

So there you have it! Everything you need to stick to your resolutions and make 2016 everything you want it to be. Good luck!

ABCNews

Image App Store

Mentioned In This Post:

About the author

Bee

Old school journalist living in a social media world.

Related Posts