December 20, 2017
Every New Year’s it’s the same thing: we all make resolutions and we almost all fail to keep them. It almost feels like the only way to keep a resolution is to simply resolve to do something you already do. “This New Year’s I made an important resolution: to finally quit smoking. And since I don’t smoke and never have, goal accomplished!”
But there’s a reason resolutions exist, and it’s because every single one of us has areas where we’d like to do better and be better. Whether it’s to get healthy, start a new hobby or get organized, no one wants to break their resolutions. How can you buck the usual trends and keep yours?
We all have phones we carry pretty much everywhere we go. And while these phones can sometimes be distractions, they can also be incredibly powerful tools to keep us on task and get things done. Check out these apps that can help you achieve your goals:
1. Get Healthy
As you might expect, this is by far the most popular resolution. The term “get healthy” accounted for 62,776,640 New Year’s related Google searches last year. Whether your goal is to lose weight or just be more active, there are tons of mostly free apps dedicated to helping. Two apps in particular stand out to assist in dieting and losing weight:
Lose It (iOS | Google) and MyFitnessPal (iOS | Google)
Both of these apps help you accomplish the same goal, which is to keep track of the calories you eat every day and ensure that number is lower than total number of calories you burn, assuring that you’re able to hit your weight loss goals. You search for what you’ve eaten (or scan the bar code from a package), select just how much of it you ate and both apps log the number calories you’ve taken in to create a complete picture of your eating habits.
And these two apps can really help you get more active:
Sworkit (iOS| Google) and Nike+ Training Club (iOS | Google)
Each of these allows you to create customized exercise routines based on your current fitness level, the amount of time of time and space you have, and how many calories you hope to burn. They then act as your personal trainer, walking you through these exercise routines while showing you how to do them correctly.
And it’s always worth remembering that Cox provides a ton of exercise classes for free On Demand. To find them, use your Contour remote to search “exercise” or “fitness” or press the On Demand button and look under Fitness.
2. Get Organized
It feels good when things are in their proper place, whether those things happen to be all the stuff piled on your desk or all the work you have scheduled for the next week. That’s why “Get Organized” was the second most popular New Year’s resolution in 2017, and these apps can really help accomplish this goal:
HabitList (iOS)
HabitList keeps you motivated to get started on tasks that you’d like to turn into a habit. Whether it’s clean the living room, go through your daily calendar, clear your inbox or more, HabitList lets you set how often you’d like to stick with your new habit (from multiple times a day to once a month) and it tracks your progress with streaks and trends.
Create tasks for yourself, break them into sub-tasks to make them easier to accomplish, and even share them with others (in case you need a little help getting things done). Making to do lists on a regular basis, and then following through on the items on that list, is always a great way to stay on task and make sure you get things done.
3. Learn a New Hobby or Skill
You’re never too old to learn something new. Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until she was in her late 70s and Julia Child didn’t learn about French cooking until her late 30s.
The extensive Lynda.com archive of instructional videos is an incredible resource for learning and mastering a wide range of skills, from art to photography to business to computer programming. Think of it as your own personal school where you get to focus solely on the topics that interest you.
If you what you want to learn is not a skill but a new language, then DuoLingo has you covered with courses that dive into 32 languages (though one of those is Klingon, so it’s really around 30 languages) and can take you from embarrassed tourist to not-so-embarrassed-tourist in no time.
Resolutions are famous for being broken, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep yours. Whatever you’re hoping to accomplish next year — big or small — there’s almost certainly an app that will help you achieve it. And most of us can use all the help we can get.
