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13 Apps To Help You Stick to Your New Year's Resolutions

By Rebecca Ngu | January 5, 2016 7:50am
 Try out different meditation apps to help you practice stillness and find more peace of mind this year.
Try out different meditation apps to help you practice stillness and find more peace of mind this year.
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NEW YORK CITY — Since following resolutions is an uphill battle, DNAinfo has scoured the Internet for the best mobile apps to keep you accountable and help you achieve your goals, from improving your productivity to mental health to fitness.

Health

► Endomondo
Free
Available on iOS, Android, Windows, and Blackberry 

Endomondo has distinguished itself in the competitive world of fitness apps, attracting more than 20 million users. Select the activity that you're about to begin from from a huge list. Then set a time, distance or calorie goal, and start exercising. The app will give you audio feedback on how you're doing and track your progress via GPS. It records stats, including personal bests, distance, calories burned, and even hydration levels. There's also a social feature: You can share your activities (or lack thereof) with family and friends to keep you motivated.

► Johnson & Johnson Official 7 Minute Workout
Free
Available on iOS and Android 

This app, which offers a personalized seven-minute workout experience, gives users explanations on proper workout form and motivational feedback. It features over 72 exercises and 22 additional workouts that can be altered to create over 1,000 variations, far more than the 12 exercises in the original 7-minute workout app. The app has over 20 intensity levels and personalized challenge levels to adapt to all kinds of users and includes post workout assessments.

► I Am Sober
$1.99
Available on iOS and Android

This "companion app" is your buddy that keeps you accountable every step of the way toward sobriety by visualizing and tracking your progress. The app counts how many years, months, and days you've been sober with a daily notification that reminds you of your commitment toward recovery. The app also helps you commemorate milestones in your journey, such as your first alcohol-free seven days or month. 

► Smoke Free
Free
Available on iOS and Android

Quitting smoking is hard, but the process has been made easier by apps such as Smoke Free. It shows your progress over time, revealing stats such how many days you’ve gone smoke-free, number of cigarettes you’ve eschewed, money you’ve saved, hours you’ve regained and health improvements. The app also features a craving diary where you can log your cravings as they happen and see them decline over time.

Mental Health and Well-Being

► Stop, Breathe & Think
Free
Available on iOS and Android

This app offers beginners a solid introduction to meditation and mindfulness. It features clear explanations of what meditation is and how to do it, along with basic exercises of various types of meditation. The app is also responsive to you as a person. Using the check-in feature, you can input how you’re feeling on a holistic level and the app suggests an array of meditation exercises customized to your moods.

► Insight Timer
Free
Available on iOs and Android

This app combines guided meditation exercises and a free meditation timer for a smooth, stress-free experience. You can listen to the app’s guided meditations or the sounds of their Tibetan singing bowls without worrying about the clock. The app lists over 2,000 local meet-up groups; eight activities beyond meditation such as tai chi, chanting and prayer; and a journaling feature to serve the veteran meditator. 

Productivity 

► Trello
Free
Available on iOS and Android 

Trello is a great team organization app that creates a visual board on which you can organize to-do’s and ideas in an intuitive, visual, fast way by yourself or with others. The system is based on cards that you drag and drop in horizontally lined stacks, each representing different stage of the process toward completion. You and other members can add comments, checklists, attachments, deadline dates, and colored codes to delegate responsibility and keep track of progress.

► Pocket
Free
Available on iOS and Android

Pocket helps reconcile the constant dilemma of the Internet: doing what you have to do versus reading all the clickbait in your Facebook feed. Pocket gives readers the ability to save interesting articles, videos and links to read later online or on their phones, even when offline. Sign up for Pocket here or download the app. 

Finances

► Level Money
Free
Available on iOs and Android 

This popular money management app doesn't just help with your budget, it creates your budget. Once it is connected to your bank account, the app calculates your income and monthly bills and generates your "spendable" — the amount of money that’s safe for you to spend on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. The app's tracking options also enable you to compare how different spending habits — such as your daily coffee intake — cut into your budget on a long-term basis. 

Hobbies

► Instructables
Free
Available on iOS, Android, and Windows

If you want to be more handy around the house or elsewhere in life, download Instructables, an app that offers step-by-step tutorials on how to do nearly anything. Get inspired by ideas from other users, execute the plan with their recipes and instructions, enhance the process with tips and hacks, and share your beauty with other community members once you've finally finished.

► Leafsnap
Free
Available on iOS

Never again wonder what kind of tree you’re looking at again. A great way to enrich your walks in the park and make you more mindful of your environment, Leafsnap uses visual recognition software to identify different tree species from photographs of their leaves. Currently, Leafsnap only has collections of trees found in the Northeastern United States and Canada, but the researchers are planning to include all trees in the continental United States and beyond.


Education

► Duolingo
Free
Available on iOS, Android, and Windows

Duolingo is an app for foreign language-learning with millions of users and awards from the likes of Google and Apple. Users can learn in an interactive, goal-based way as they undergo a series of quizzes testing them on verbal, reading and writing skills. The app tracks your progress and questions change based on past right and wrong answers. The app offers 26 languages for English speakers.

 ► iTunes U
Free

This iOS app is not only a tool for educators and students, but an amazing way to learn from the best universities in the world for free. You can browse through the catalogue of one million lectures, videos, and texts from real classes taught by real professors on subjects ranging from philosophy to technology. Materials are provided by universities such as Stanford, Oxford, McGill and Yale.