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The year 2021 holds a lot of anticipation as the world hopefully recovers from the pandemic and people around the world have more clarity than ever on their priorities. Let’s take a look at some of the best apps for building habits, setting stakes, and reaching New Year’s resolutions with iPhone and Apple Watch.
Rethinking New Years Resolutions
While New Years Resolutions can be a good place to start, they are often too broad and / or not set with actionable milestones. Another difficult aspect of New Year’s resolutions is that they can be related to guilt and regret, especially if it’s something you’ve been aiming for or struggling with for some time.
I have found this approach by Tim Ferriss to be extremely valuable and effective: replace New Years Resolutions with a “Year in Review”. The idea is to intentionally look at last year (with your calendar if possible) and write down what things have moved for you in positive and negative directions.
Next, list the 20% of the things you did that produced the most impactful results (and determine what to do and what to avoid going forward). Read more about this approach on Tim’s blog here. If you give it a try, I think you’ll head into 2021 with more clarity on what’s important to you, what your goals really are, and more concrete steps to get there. You can still come up with one or more New Year’s resolutions, but last year’s review process should provide real added value.
Also keep in mind that while it can be tempting to tackle several new habits at once, many people find the most success by making fewer changes simultaneously. For more on building and breaking habits, James Clear’s bestseller Atomic habits is very useful.
How to Achieve New Year’s Resolutions with iPhone and Apple Watch
IPhone and Apple Watch can be great tools to help you stay on track with your bigger goals, and more specifically, the daily action to make or break your habits. Below, we’ll take a look at 4 great apps to hit your New Year’s resolutions with iPhone and Apple Watch.
Putting the stakes
Stickk
I wanted to share this one first because setting real stakes can be a major factor in creating new habits to achieve New Year’s resolutions. Often times we know what to do and how to do it, but we don’t act. consistently, and that’s what Stickk was designed for.
Stickk comes from a behavioral economist and law professor at Yale University and the main idea is “INCENTIVES x RESPONSIBILITY = KEY TO SUCCESS”.
Here’s how the app works:
- Set your goal – ANY goal (lose weight, take care of yourself, meditate, finish your thesis …) and a timeline to achieve it
- Invite someone – a friend, colleague, or family member – to hold you accountable and check on your progress
- Act rather than talk! Set a price for inaction – add stakes to your engagement (optional)
- Track your progress by reporting your successes or failures daily, weekly OR at the end of your employment contract
Stickk is available for free on iPhone, Mac, and the web. You can download it from the App Store.
Track New Years Resolutions with iPhone and Apple Watch
Ok, let’s take a look at some awesome apps to track your goals and habits:
Streaks
Crunchy Bagel, developer of Streaks, describes the app as “the to-do list that helps you build healthy habits.” It lets you track up to 12 tasks per day, is super customizable with 78 colorful themes, 600 icons and how often a task needs to be repeated.
You also get support for widgets, Siri shortcuts, Apple Health, and more.
Streaks won an Apple Editors’ Choice award and has a very high average rating of 4.8 / 5 stars by over 14,000 reviews.
Streaks is available for $ 4.99 from the App Store and works with iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and iMessage.
HabitMinder
This is another great app based on the same idea of a habit-driven to-do list. HabitMinder offers mini-apps and “session” screens.
Other cool features include widgets, a clean and simple user interface, and it’s free to try before you buy to unlock all the features of the app.
User likes HabitMinder with an average rating of 4.7 / 5 stars out of almost 4,000 reviews. It is available for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.
HabitMinder is available as a free download from the App Store with a lifetime license priced at $ 19.99, annual subscription at $ 9.99, and monthly subscription at $ 0.99.
Achievements
This is a new app that takes an interesting approach to include both your overall goals and the habits that will help you achieve them.
The emphasis is on a minimalist user interface with haptic feedback and nice sound effects. It also has widgets and customization with icons and 5 colorful themes. Achievements also includes over 300 quotes for inspiration.
While only one iPhone app is available at the moment, developer 2196 told us that an Apple Watch app is in the works with a stats page and support for more languages.
Achievements is available for download at $ 4.99 on the App Store.
Apple apps
If you don’t want to pick a new app to help you with your New Year’s habits and resolutions on iPhone and Apple Watch, you can always use the built-in Reminders app and create recurring alerts.
If you want to get more details, you can also create subtasks in the Reminders app, and also take advantage of the Notes app for longer habit journaling / tracking.
And if your goal is health related, you can track your workouts in the Fitness app and other details in the Health app.
New Year’s Resolutions Recap with iPhone
I try to keep in mind that the most important thing is not the tool I use to track my progress, but it really is about consistency with the daily action to create a new habit.
Apps can be part of achieving New Year’s resolutions with iPhone and the above apps are great. But clarity, motivation, accountability and follow through is what will make the real difference. Hello to the New Year and to achieving your goals!
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