Tech Tip – January – Goal Tracking and Planning

The start of a new year always brings hopes and dreams of something more and better things ahead. They can be personal, professional, or this year – everything. Typically, January is a month when people set new goals, choose to build new habits, and get a fresh start. All of those things are hard. One of the biggest challenges most people face with this is trying to do all of them at once. I would recommend you evaluate that for yourself and ensure you have not taken on too much at one time. We will visit that subject in the near future as well.

Once you have determined the goals and or habits you want to take on for this new year, you might want a way to track how well you are doing with them. I thought it would be good to take a quick look at some of the digital tools that are available to do just that. Before we get there, I will provide two caveats – tracking does not have to be digital, you can use good ol’ fashioned pen and paper to track your progress. Second, find a system that works for you and not someone else. My purpose in this article is to share some ideas that you might not have thought of otherwise. I have used and tried different apps in the past, and I still use a couple for different things. Streaks (mentioned below) is a simple application that allows you to track repeating habits. I still use this. Some of the other tracking I use is built into other applications, such as Apple Fitness – this tracks my activities each day. It is built in, tracks automatically, but also shows a history and tracking. 

Here are some options for both goal tracking and habit tracking – and these can be very different from each other.

Streaks

Streaks app FREE

This is an app I have been using for about a year now. I wrote about it (Tech Tip – Streaks – Keep Your Habits on Track) shortly after the pandemic began last March. It is a ‘quiet’ app that mostly runs in the background. I have most of my habits set up to track automatically through other information collected by my watch or food tracking app. This is good from the standpoint of not having to do much to maintain information. However, since I do not interact with the app itself much, I am not looking at the data or weekly trends that might help keep me on track more often. That may also be a function of what I have in this app – it is more health related versus work or behavioral habits outside of health. 

Streaks provide a chart view to be able to see progress and metrics over time. This is a great way to look back over a quarter or the year to see how you have done in achieving the habits you set up to track. I do wish it had more details on this view, but it is a good snapshot to get a perspective on your progress and consistency.

Streaks is easy to use, integrates well with other Apple devices, and gives enough data and feedback to be very useful for tracking nearly anything you want. I will continue to use it, even as I give a few of the others on this list a try for 2021.

Way of Life

Way of Life app FREE (in app purchases available)

Way of Life seems to be a simple app also for tracking any type of habit. I have been playing with this one for a few days to understand how it works and what benefits it offers. Out of the gate, it is simple to track information, but not as user intuitive as I would like or as intuitive as Streaks is.

It does have a nice function for daily notes or journalling, which I think is a great piece of information to collect as you are trying to build habits. This is something that having together with your habit trends can be useful for identifying barriers to success. It can also be a nice way to give yourself a little recognition.

Finally, Way of Life is a freemium app, meaning it is free to start using, but limited in what it can do without paying. The app will allow you to track up to three items in the free version. A $6.99 one-time fee unlocks unlimited tracking and the ability to back up your information to a cloud service. Way of Life is available for both iOS and Android devices.

Goals on Track

Goals on Track $68/year

Goals on Track is more of a goal setting and tracking system than an app or simple goal tracker. This is a web-based system that has a companion iOS app to support updates on the go.

This is a good site to visit and get ideas on how you can set goals and break them into smaller sub-goals to ensure you can achieve your main objectives. There is a lot that could be gained from looking at this and using this process for your personal goals or your store or district goals as a whole.

This one does come with a cost, $68 per year, but if you use it to its full potential, I think it could be a very worthy investment of time and money. There is also a monthly option for $9.99 if you wanted to give it a try and see how it may work for you.

Where I see this being of the most use would be for having a place specifically for goal tracking with templates and a framework for entry and follow up of goals. In many ways, if you have a solid task management system that allows you to break projects into smaller, individual tasks, you may be able to achieve the same outcomes using that versus this software.

Coach.me

Coach.me Free and purchases available

In its most basic form, Coach.me is a simple goal tracking app that you can use on your phone to stay on target and track your progress on the goals you have set for yourself. Coach.me is set up to be a social platform that create accountability to the goals you choose. Upon creating an account and working in the app, you select goal areas you want to work in (some feel pretty generic). You assign the details, like frequency. The most common path will be to ‘join’ existing goals and become a member of that goal community. You can create your own ‘group’ for a specific habit. For example, there is an existing group that has a goal of ‘get 8 hours of sleep each night’. If you wanted to set a goal for ‘get 7 hours of sleep each night’ you would add that and create a new group that others could join. Either way, you have the ability to track your progress and see others that provide comments, recognition, or support in the discussion area.

Expanding beyond that, the overall platform allows you to hire a coach to be an accountability partner and support structure to assist in achieving your goals. Coach.me lists coaches in different life domains and starts as low as $14.99 per week. 

This is an interesting concept. If you have trouble holding yourself accountable for your goals (especially personal goals), this could be a way to create accountability partners and feel connected to others trying to accomplish the same things.

Habitica

Habitica FREE (with in app purchases)

This may be the most fun app, especially when thinking about your goals. It links the idea of goal achievement to the growing trend of gamification for outside activities. When you set up your account for Habitica, you create an avatar that is then immersed in a simple game you can play on your mobile devices. The environment is set as a role-playing game where you collect points, gems, other rewards for accomplishing your ‘real-life’ goals. As you mark items as complete for your goal tracking you receive the ‘earnings’ in the game you are playing. Likewise, if you fall off target there are consequences within the game.

This is a clever way to get people to engage with their goals and have some fun at the same time. I think everyone understands the idea of ‘leveling up’ for accomplishing tasks, this bridges that concept between the real world and a game.

The application is free to use, but you can subscribe to get additional ‘gems’ to use within the game. If you like to play games, need a distraction to go with your goals, or just need some additional motivation (and like these types of games), Habitica would be a great (and fun) option to try.

Toodledo

Toodledo FREE w/ pricing plans for additional functionality

There is a lot to like and to learn about Toodledo. As they describe it, this application is a total productivity system. It integrates several different parts of organizing your life, both personally and professionally. The application integrates task tracking, lists, notes, outlines, and habits into the single application. For many people that is a really nice benefit of having so many components all in one place. The typical trade off is the functionality levels of each of those pieces. From my high-level review of the app, the task tracking looks fully customizable and would be a solid task management app on its own. The habit tracking looks robust and easy to use. The lists, notes, and outlines look very basic, but they may be all you need on those categories.

There is a free version of Toodledo. It is tricky to understand exactly what you get for free and what additional services you receive by subscribing. Subscriptions begin at $2.99 per month based on an annual subscription. When you download the mobile applications, Toodledo is a fully functional application. The subscriptions do add some features to be able to expand its capabilities and storage functions. The free version is certainly robust enough to determine if this is the right system for you.

We have looked at several different applications for goal and habit tracking. There are a few other apps that might be worth checking out. There are literally hundreds of options available, so you may have suggestions or ideas of your own as well (feel free to share in comments).

Loop Habit Tracker – Daily tracking and reporting to see your progress on your habits. This is more designed for specific habit tracking versus achievement goals.

ATracker – A time tracking process more than a habit or goal tracker specifically. This can be a great way to track how much time you spend on your habits or goals, or another way to manage your time on your devices if that is related to your habits or goals you are setting.

Lifetick – SMART goal setting and journaling together. Can be used for individuals or for your team.

As with most things that are meant to support you, whatever system or application works best for you is the right one to use. I would encourage you to at least look at some or all of these, if for no other reason, to get some ideas on things you might be able to do within your own system. I have picked up a couple of ideas I will be trying early in the year for sure. And a few of these systems may be ones I come back to later for other purposes outside my own goal tracking. There may come a point where I revisit one or more of these to do a deeper look at what all it can do. Certainly, Toodledo is an interesting and wide-ranging application that is far more than just goal tracking. In the meantime, good luck on getting a positive start to the year and your habits and goals well under way.

Which of these applications sparked curiosity in you? How are you tracking your habits and goals this year?

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