New Year’s resolutions with iPhone: how to achieve your goals

2021 brings a lot of expectations, as the world is recovering from the pandemic and people around the world are more clear than ever about their priorities. Let’s take a look at some of the best apps to create habits, set bets and reach New Year’s resolutions with iPhone and Apple Watch.

Rethinking New Year’s Resolutions

Although New Year’s resolutions can be a good starting point, they are usually very broad and / or not defined with actionable steps. Another difficult aspect of New Year’s resolutions is that they can be linked to guilt and regret, especially if they are something you have been aiming for or struggling with for some time.

I found this Tim Ferriss approach super valuable and effective: replace New Year’s resolutions with a “Last Year’s Review”. The idea is to look intentionally at the past year (with your calendar, if possible) and write down what has moved you, both in the positive and negative direction.

Then, restrict 20% of the things you did that produced the most impactful results (and guide what to do and avoid going ahead). Read more about this approach on Tim’s blog here. If you try, I think you’ll enter 2021 with more clarity about what’s important to you, what your real goals are, and more practical steps to get there. You can still come up with a New Year’s resolution (s), but the previous year’s review process should offer some real added value.

Also, remember that while it may be tempting to deal with several new habits at the same time, many people are more successful in making fewer changes simultaneously. For more reading on how to make and break habits, James Clear’s bestseller Atomic Habits it is very useful.

How to get New Year’s resolutions with iPhone and Apple Watch

The iPhone and Apple Watch can be great tools to help you stay in control of your bigger goals and, specifically, the daily action to build or break habits. Below, we’ll look at 4 great apps to reach your New Year’s resolutions with iPhone and Apple Watch.

Defining bets

Stickk

I wanted to share this one first, as establishing real bets can be an important factor in creating new habits to achieve New Year’s resolutions. We often know what to do and how to do it, but we don’t take consistent action, and that’s what Stickk was built for.

Stickk comes from a behavioral economist and law professor at Yale University and the main idea is “INCENTIVES x RESPONSIBILITY = KEY TO SUCCESS.”

Here’s how the app works:

1. Define your goal – ANY goal (lose weight, self-care, meditation, finish your thesis …) and a timeline for achieving it
2. Invite someone – a friend, coworker or family member – to hold you accountable and check your progress
3. Put your money where your mouth is! Set a price for inaction – add bets to your commitment (optional)
4. Track your progress, reporting your successes or failures daily, weekly OR at the end of your Commitment Contract

Stickk is available for iPhone, Mac and the web for free. You can download it from the App Store.

Tracking New Year’s resolutions with iPhone and Apple Watch

Okay, let’s take a look at some great apps to track your goals and habits:

Stripes

Streaks developer Crunchy Bagel describes the app as “The to-do list that helps you form good habits”. It allows you to track up to 12 tasks per day, is super customizable with 78 colorful themes, 600 icons and how often a task must be repeated.

You also have support for Widgets, Siri Shortcuts, Apple Health and more.

Streaks won Apple’s Editors’ Choice Award and has a very high average rating of 4.8 / 5 stars from more than 14,000 reviewers.

Streaks is available for $ 4.99 on the App Store and works with iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and iMessage.

HabitMinder

This is another great app based on the same idea of ​​a task list focused on habits. HabitMinder features mini applications and “session” screens.

Other great features include widgets, a clean and simple UI, and it’s free to try before you buy to unlock all of the app’s features.

The user’s love HabitMinder with an average rating of 4.7 / 5 stars out of almost 4,000 reviews. It is available for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.

HabitMinder is available for free download from the App Store with a $ 19.99 lifetime license, $ 9.99 annual subscription and $ 0.99 monthly subscription.

Achievements

This is a new application that has an interesting approach to include your general goals and habits that will help you achieve them.

There is a focus on a minimalist UI with tactile feedback and good sound effects. It also has widgets and customization with icons and 5 colorful themes. Achievements also features over 300 quotes for some inspiration.

Although only one iPhone app is available for now, developer 2196 told us that an Apple Watch app is in progress along with a statistics page and support for more languages.

Achievements is available for download for $ 4.99 from the App Store.

Apple apps

If you don’t want to choose a new app to help with your New Year’s habits and resolutions on the iPhone and Apple Watch, you can always use the integrated Reminders app and create recurring alerts.

If you want to get more details, you can also create subtasks in the Reminders application and also take advantage of the Notes application for journaling / tracking habits in a longer format.

And if your goal is health related, you can track your workouts in the Fitness app and other details in the Health app.

Solve New Year’s resolutions with iPhone

I try to keep in mind that the most important thing is not the tool I am using to track my progress, but the consistency with the daily action in creating a new habit.

Apps can be part of getting New Year’s resolutions with the iPhone and the apps above are great. But clarity, encouragement, responsibility and follow-up are what will make the real difference. Cheers for the new year and the achievement of your goals!

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