While making resolutions has become a common practice, especially when a new year approaches, a lot of people end up not making any because most of the time they will not be able to keep them. Some even consider the act as stupid and complete waste of energy.
Don't be this guy.
I had my share of unaccomplished resolutions and I agree that you shouldn't wait for January first to change something. However, there is just this great amount of hope the first day of a new year brings so keep making those New Year resolutions until you get tired of not keeping them.
I still believe in this "new year, new me" crap and I think the reason why a lot of people fail miserably at fulfilling them is that along the way they get tired or forget about them (this article from the Pennsylvania Psychological Association makes more sense tackling the issue as to why we don't keep our New Year's resolutions).
I'm no psychology expert, but based from experience, staying committed would have been much easier if we have someone or something that reminded us why we made those resolutions in the first place. For this reason, I was inspired to look for tech tools that will do just that. If you agree with me, keep reading!
Top New Year's Resolutions for 2014
According to this data by the University of Scranton Journal of Clinical Psychology as curated by StatisticBrain.com, the top New Year's resolutions for 2014 in America includes changing for a healthier lifestyle and learning to manage finances well.
In this blog post, I used the above information to find these Awesome Tech Resources to Help You Fulfill Your 2014 New Year Resolutions!
1. Send an email to your future self via FutureMe.org
Do you want to save 20% of your salary every payday? Do you want to learn to say no to Friday night out with colleagues because you want to spend less? Do you want to spend more time with your love ones and stop forgetting important dates? Do you want to be reminded about your 2014 fitness plans so that you will remain on track?
FutureMe.org is a browser based app that you can use to send an email to yourself on a future date. The email can either be set to public or private. You can also use the email scheduling feature of your mail client to setup reminders or email alerts but FutureMe.org makes the whole process easy.
2. Start a new habit with Lift
Most of the resolutions that people make are routines and the best way to keep these kind of resolutions is to turn them into habits. Lift is like a Foursquare for goals because you "check-in" every time you accomplish one of your goals or take steps towards accomplishing them until they become part of your daily routine.
There is a lot of existing plans you can join like the "no email before breakfast" challenge and the mental math program. You can also create your own. Most of them takes 21 days to complete based upon the popular quote "it takes 21 days to form a habit".
The best thing about this app is that you can have discussions with other people who made the same goals as you did. You can ask for help, learn tips on how other people keep up with their objectives, motivate each other, and share experiences. I think it really helps when you don't feel alone in doing something. The app also gives you your daily dose of motivation to help you in your journey.
I really like the concept behind this app, but they can make it even more awesome if they add badges whenever a user finish a plan in order to gamify the whole experience and inspire people to use it even more.
You can register on Lift for free via the web but it is also available for both android, and IOS devices.
3. Break bad habits with help from Quitter (iOS only)
Aside from starting new habits that are beneficial to you, there is also a need to break habits, particularly the bad ones like chain smoking, alcoholism, eating lots of junk food, or impulse shopping. :D
The main focus of this app is to show you how long it has been since you last indulged and how much money you have saved. If money is a good motivator for you, check out this app!
Look at that crazy amount of money saved for not smoking for 4 years!
New Year's resolutions in general are all about making new habits to replace the bad ones and staying motivated to keep them. The above tools I mentioned should be able to help you whatever your goals are for this year. While researching for this blog post, I stumbled upon tons of really helpful apps, but I choose to include only the generic ones. For the next days, I decided to make round up posts on the more specific tools like fitness and finance apps so watch out for it.
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