6 Apps to Help You Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions

{Image Credit: iStock}

Living in a culture inundated with the urge to change our ways once a new year hits can be incredibly intimidating. Not only is it hard to figure out our resolutions and work at them every single day, but it can be stressful seeing others start on goals, while you wonder how they truly do it.

From planning trips to the appeal of green juice cleanses, setting goals for a new year ahead can be hard and induce a heap load of anxiety that can often hinder productivity and dampen your spirits. But the truth is, resolutions can be scary, especially since researchers at the University of Scranton found only 8 percent of people successfully achieve resolutions every year. You know what that means? It means 92 percent fail. Ouch. Totally disheartening, right? But we’re not the type to stop at failure.

With the first week of the new year officially done, how are you doing with your resolutions? To help you stay on track this year and get more organized, use your trusty devices to hold you accountable and achieve your goals. What’s the point of technology if it can’t help us? Whether your resolution is to eat more healthy or budget wisely, we take a look at some amazing apps to help you be more productive and reach your goals by Dec. 31, 2017.

{Image Credit: Duolingo}

Duolingo

Goal: Learning a new language

There is no greater asset in this world than learning a new language! It’s fun, makes you more sociable and helps broaden your mind. One of the best apps to help you with this is Duolingo. As a personal favorite, this app will give you as much as you can handle without the pressure. Offering lessons in short bursts, users can learn at a gradual pace and even practice with friends. Best of all, since we are all competitive by nature, there’s a great dose of gaming in here with goals and challenges, as well as tokens to open new lessons and bots to help you practice conversation.

CARROT

Goal: Be more productive

Known also as the “Don’t Suck at Life” app, CARROT is one to really rave about, even though its creators call it a hilariously sadistic platform as it’s one that promises to get you to be more productive with your tasks. Featuring a ton of personality and feelings — more so than even Siri! — its sole duty is to literally get you to do things and if you don’t, you end up making it very mad. If you do well and accomplish your tasks, you are showered with the nicest and most encouraging compliments. However, if you tread sloth territory, it will throw personal insults at you from its heart of weapons-grade plutonium, and make you really sad about your goals. It’s pretty viscous, but if you respond better to negative feedback than positive, this is the app to boost your productivity.

Shopwell

Goal: Eat more healthier

We all want to eat healthier, but it can be hard and often times, super difficult with the cost of living going up. How can you shop for the right food when it’s so darn expensive? Shopwell is an amazing app that has a few unique functions to help you make a healthy grocery list, while reducing your urge to splurge on junk food. By building a nutritional profile on every item you pick up, the app includes advice directly from registered dietitians and a scoring system to let you know how you’re doing and if you’re meeting your eat well goals.

{Image Credit: Bookling}

Bookling

Goal: Start reading print-books more often

Goodreads might be a great app and site, but can it send you reminders to get you back to your reading habits? Bookling is an effective tool in getting you back on track with books by helping you set goals and alarms to remind you to read. Not only is it a smart way to break your screen addiction and get you back to print books, but it also functions with a slight competitiveness thanks to goals that allow you to unlock fun badges.

Mint

Goal: Budget and finance wisely

Okay, so you might not be the next Warren Buffet, but the Mint app is a great way to finance smartly. Featuring graphical presentations and in-depth charts outlining your savings, transactions and spending habits, this app calculates efficiently for effective budgeting. Additionally, you can set up reminders so that you never miss a payment on those important utility bills, credit cards and more. While it’s available for smartphones, it’s best explored on tablets, especially when viewing your progressive charts.

Headspace

Goal: Improve thinking and create clarity

Improve your thinking and focus on what matters to you thanks to Headspace. Offering free meditation practices that can be done anywhere in less than 10 minutes a day, this app helps you to really unwind and channel your best self through methods of Zen. With every session covering a variety of issues from channeling your optimism to visualizing success, it’s one that makes the whole realm of meditation less scary and formal. Plus, in case you didn’t know, meditation has shown to reduce stress, help you to sleep better and get you focused to exercise more, so this is one to definitely bolster your inner strength and help you expand on your way of thinking.

What are some of your favorite apps to accomplish your resolutions and goals? Share with us in the comments below.