Many people are unable to keep up with their New Year’s resolutions, and thus fall flat of their goals within the first few months of making them. There are many reasons that people are unable to keep up with their resolutions, such as a lack of willpower or motivation. Accountability, that is, being held responsible for your actions (or a lack thereof), can be successful in combating these common downfalls. These apps can offer the accountability you need to help you on your way to the best “new you” that you can be.
New languages
Duolingo: Duolingo is a language-learning app that features over 30 languages. Complete challenges to earn “lingots”, and use them to to buy fun categories such as idioms or flirting in the language that you study. Connect with others learning your language or use the live or scripted chat options that Duolingo provides for real practice.
Memrise: Much like Duolingo, this app is based off of the immersive approach to learning a new language rather than explaining the specific grammatical rules of the language. Pro, which is required past a certain (early) learning point, is rather expensive but features a year-long subscription to the program. Make sure you get your money’s worth of lessons by practicing every day!
Diet and Exercise
MyFitnessPal: With MyFitnessPal you can log your meals and workouts and track your progress over time. Connect with your friends to keep each other accountable and support each other in your new year goals.
ToneItUp: This app offers live daily classes where you can track your workouts and connect with the ToneItUp community. To keep you accountable, the app offers a scheduling option where you can be reminded about a class shortly before it begins. A free trial is available for a short period of time, but after that monthly or yearly subscription fee is required to access the classes.
SoBi: This bike app is special because it provides easy access to the Comporium bikes around campus (first two hours are free!). With this app, you can check out bikes and bike hubs around you, and even reserve bikes for a short period of time.
Lifesum: Diet and Macro Tracker: this app includes recipes, meal tips, and an activity tracker to help you manage your meals. After a short quiz, Lifesum gives you eating plans that are based upon your personal meal goals (lose weight, build muscle, or reduce sugar intake).
Meditation and Mindfulness
Aura: Aura is an app that offers three minute life coaching and meditation sessions. These sessions can be based upon your mood (anxiety, stress relief) or upon other factors in your life (sleep, motivation, relationships). Aura offers many of these categories for free, but for a subscription, you are able to unlock longer sessions and more life coaching options than with the free version.
Shine: This app offers meditation or mindfulness sessions that tend to be more specific than what you would find on Aura. Shine offers sessions on things such as letting go of regrets, dealing with the stress of online dating, and how to be mindful while doing simple, everyday tasks such as washing the dishes. This app is designed to be used while going about a daily routine, although just like Aura, the full app can only be unlocked with a monthly or yearly subscription.
Healthy Habits
Fabulous: This is an app that works to help you build up healthy habits and goals through the use of repetition, reminders, and routines. Daily goals build upon each other, and routines are built for the mornings, afternoons, and evenings that include eating healthy meals, drinking enough water, and forming a consistent sleep schedule. This app also offers access to articles on self care, meditation, motivation, and more.
Budget
Twine: This app is made to help you save up for a particular goal, such as a trip or a new car. One of the things that makes this app special is that you can connect multiple people to one account in order to help save money together towards a common goal, such as a group vacation.
Mint: Personal Finance and Money: Mint logs and categorizes each of your monetary transactions made through your connected bank account. With this app, you can monitor how much you spend, see how much you make, and track your spending trends so that you can hold yourself accountable and monitor your spending habits.
Learn a New Skill
MasterClass: This app offers online classes taught by masters of their craft, offering courses in cooking, acting, writing, and more, but it does come with a price tag. Payments can be per course or, for the price of two classes, a person can buy an unlimited subscription for a full year.
Read More Books
Overdrive or Libby by Overdrive: Through Overdrive’s online library system, anyone with a library card can borrow books, audiobooks, and video streams online for free and read them from their device. Because titles are automatically returned at the due date, there is no need to worry about late fees.
