“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work”
(Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft).
What makes exceptional people exceptional? Are they different from ordinary people? Are ordinary people just lazy? Are exceptional people just lucky to be born with strong will power and self motivation?
Extraordinary people don’t wait for inspiration: they do things whether they feel like it or not. If you look at exceptional people, one thing they have in common is being consistent.
A successful writer will write X words every day. A successful athlete will exercise X amount every day. They have a schedule and they stick to it. They don’t wait to feel motivated. They act in spite of their feelings, not because of them.
Set Effective Goals
So you want to be successful and exceptional. Where do you begin? Phillippa Lally conducted a study to determine how long it takes to form a habit.
Over 12 weeks, they looked at 96 people who each chose a new habit and gave daily reports about whether or not they completed their task and how automatic it felt to do so. Everyone chose different tasks from drinking water to running. The researchers analysed the data, and found that it took anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form a new habit. It depends on lots of different factors, but the average time it took to form a habit was 66 days.
It was also found that messing up didn’t really effect the formation of the habit. So don’t worry! It will take time to form a habit. And if you miss a couple of times, it won’t have a devastating impact on your habit.
The best place to start is by working out what you want to achieve. Check out SMART Goals to find out how to set effective goals.
Monitor Your Goals
How do you know if you are achieving your goals? Do you just bury your head in the sand and hope for the best? Psychologists call this “The Ostrich Problem” and suggest that some people may be afraid of not being as close to their goals as they wish or hope to be, so they just don’t check how they’re progressing.
However, reliable feedback is an excellent way to determine whether your actions are working, or whether you need to do things differently to make sure you get where you want to be. A recent study identified the most effective strategies people use to achieve their goals and push through difficult challenges. One of these strategies is monitoring your goals.
Let’s take a look at five different habit tracking apps and see how they can help you track your goals and monitor your progress.
Loop – Habit Tracker
This app is really simple and easy to use. It’s really minimalistic in its design, and also has a dark mode.
You basically list the habits you wish to track, it creates a list for you, and you simply check the items that you have completed. You can choose how frequently you wish to track a habit, whether it is every day, once a week, every other day, or whatever suits you. Then you can create an individual reminder for each habit. You can see your progress with detailed graphs and statistics. It’s optimised for smartwatches which is really convenient.
The best thing is that it is completely open-source, so there are no adverts and the source code is available.
Price: free
Download Loop here (Android only)
Habitica: Gamify Your Tasks
Habitica is a really cute app that uses gamification to help you achieve your goals. You create a custom avatar and then input your habits, daily goals, and to-do list. As you complete tasks, you can level up and unlock a variety of features including armour, pets, skills, and quests.
One of the best features is that you can collaborate with your friends and keep each other accountable. So you can fight monsters together by completing tasks. There are also guilds you can join and participate with loads of different people, sharing information, tips and tricks, and connecting with like-minded individuals who share your goals.
The app is free to use with all features available, however they do offer in-app purchases and subscriptions. It is important to note that “Habitica is not a pay-to-win game and subscribers generally do not gain benefits over non-paying users in terms of advancing in Habitica” (Habitica Wiki). The source code for the app is available on Github, which is also a really nice feature.
Price: free, in-app purchases and subscriptions available
Download Habitica here (Android)
Download Habitica here (iOS)
Forest: Stay Focused
This next app is great for those of us who are easily distracted by our technology and need help creating time away from our phones. Now this is a wonderful idea: when you succeed at your habits, a real tree will be planted! There are real world consequences if you can be consistent in your daily activities and trees will be planted because of you sticking to your goals!
Basically, whenever you need to focus on something you can use the app to set a timer that will plant trees. While you are working, the tree will grow. If you leave the app, your tree will die. The harder you work, the more lush and beautiful your forest becomes. So you can develop healthy working patterns that improve your productivity. There are really cute little plant species from which to choose, and as you earn more gold you can unlock new options.
Price: free and premium versions available on Android, iOS is paid only
Download Forest here (Android)
Download Forest here (iOS)
Goal Tracker & Habit List & Workout Calendar
Another simple app that is completely free without adds or in-app purchases. It’s easy to add goals and you can choose daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly habits to track. You can select different schedule options for your habits, with notifications to remind you. You can also export your goals to to a variety of storage options. You can view your progress by selecting from a detail view, week view, or month view.
Price: Free
Download Goal Tracker & Habit List & Workout Calendar here (Android only)
Habit Tracker/Habit-Bull
Last, but not least, is Habit-Bull (called Habit Tracker on Android). You start by adding your goals and the app provides you with a wide selection of different options. It asks “What would you like to change in your life right now?” and provides a drop down menu including most popular, arts, health and fitness, money, social, and so on and then gives suggestions such as fitness, diet and food, time management, meditation, medication, drinking water, and more. This is a great feature, especially for those who know they want to improve their lives but are not quite sure where to begin.
There is a free version, but you are limited in the number of goals that you can create. You can track up to five habits, get reminders, and get motivational images. With the premium version you can track up to 100 habits, back up to the cloud, sync over multiple devices, choose from three widgets, and export your data to CSV.
This app is awesome because you can create customisable goals, you can track your progress with graphs, and the motivational quotes are a nice addition.
Price: Free and premium versions available
Download Habit Tracker here (Android)
Download Habit-Bull here (iOS)
Track Yourself
There are a lot of different apps from which to choose, and it can be challenging to find one that works for you.
I really like Loop because it is so simple, but there are loads of other apps with more features if that’s your vibe.
Ultimately, there are lots of ways to get motivated and keep track of your goals and stay on task, even when you’re not in the mood. Apps are a useful resource to make your goal monitoring easy and fun.
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