It’s easy to lose track of our priorities in a busy week. What you might have scribbled on a piece of paper on Monday is nowhere to be found when Friday comes around and you’re trying to set your agenda for the next week. These five apps can remind you of your goals and help you meet them.
HabitList: A Snapchat “streak” is fun, but a habit streak can be life-changing. HabitList is an app that reminds you of your priorities and tracks how often you’ve kept them, whether that means going to the gym or making it home in time for a family dinner. With graphs that track trends in your behavior over time, HabitList can help you make big changes in small steps.
StickK: Want an extra incentive to stick to your priorities? StickK, an app created by two prominent behavioral economists at Yale, centers on a “commitment contract” that you make with yourself. When you sign one of these contracts, you set a goal, a time period for meeting it, and an amount of your own money that you’ll lose if you fail to meet the goal. The concept is based on two principles of behavioral economics: (1) “loss aversion,” or the fact that people are motivated by the threat of losing money more than by the possibility of gaining it, and (2) “time inconsistency,” or the fact that, in the absence of a consistent motivator (like StickK), people won’t consistently act on their priorities.
GoalsOnTrack: GoalsOnTrack helps you set goals, map out timelines and create plans for meeting them. Research by the American Psychological Association affirms that regularly keeping track of progress increases the odds of meeting a goal. GoalsOnTrack has appealing graphics and a “Goal Journal” that allows you to make daily, weekly, or monthly notes to yourself about difficulties in meeting a goal.
Wunderlist: Wunderlist allows you to organize and share to-do lists, which can be extremely valuable in holding people accountable for group projects with multiple deadlines. It’s office harmony at the push of a button.
Strides: Strides is an app that allows you to set goals and track your progress on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. With a milestone tracker and clear graphics of your progress, Strides can help you with goals as different as losing weight and saving money.