Image from the Wall Street Journal
Do your ambitious New Year’s Resolutions get recycled year after year? To prevent that eternal negative loop, here are some ingenious apps to help you meet your goals.
“My New Year’s resolution is to write more…”
“If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.” -Ernest Hemingway
The Hemingway app edits out the frills as if Hemingway himself is looking over your shoulder. Mouse over your text for stronger verbs and deflate bloated sentences for more potent prose. Unlike other apps you won’t be overwhelmed with hyperbolic storyboarding, autocorrects or highlighted themes–it’ll only strip your writing down for more clarity.
For every poet, rapper or songwriter stumped on a rhyme, Poetreat is a helpful and aesthetically pleasing app at the ready with suggestions and prompts. Does ABAB sound too stale? What about BAAB, or ABBA? Poetreat also lets you rejigger lines and tweak your rhyme schemes for the most mellifluous results.
“My New Year’s resolution is to read more…”
Struggle with reading deadlines for your book club or classes? Do you avoid taking on the epic classics–Don Quixote? Moby Dick? War and Peace? Portrait of a Lady?–because you can’t see the finish line? ReadMore is a digital reading aid that breaks up your reading into manageable time chunks that jive with your actual schedule. After the app has enough data inputted to hack your reading habits, it provides feedback about when you read the most effectively and provides guesstimated completion dates for books in your queue.
Goodreads is the Facebook app of the reader world. Users can log their progress and check what their friends are reading. Every book finished becomes an earned accolade, and the grand total is highlighted in your profile. Not only is it fun to know who else among your friends will have an opinion on the book you just read, but there’s nothing like positive peer pressure to keep you motivated to maintain your well-read status.
“My New Year’s resolution is to lose weight…”
You may kick off the year guns blazing by signing up for a new gym and cooking up healthy meals–but it’s all too easy to let those diet cookbooks become coasters, and before long the only time you mention that boot camp class is when you’re trying to get out of an unpleasant social engagement. With Lose It! you won’t have the time suck of making elaborate entrees from scratch nor the torture of a hellacious cardio routine. Monitor your calories, sleep time and meals for a diet and exercise process that is seamless–you should probably delete Seamless!
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he Government is fed up with hearing about diet resolutions so they’ve unleashed the zombie hoard upon us. Only the fit will be able to outrun the mutated monsters. Well, not actually, but the Zombies Run app sets up a virtual world that’s close to it. You’ll run missions as a survivor of the Zombie apocalypse and earn points to build up your base. If you’re a gamer at all, you’ll love this app–or maybe there is a gamer in your life who can help motivate you. Either way, the zombies are coming. You better get to it.
“My New Year’s resolution is to budget better…”
MoneyPad consolidates your personal finances in one place. It links to your various financial accounts and credit cards and categorizes your expenses so you can know where your money going–but don’t worry, MoneyPad isn’t accessing your private information. It keeps all of the info on your phone. If you want to find out how you’re spending your money and where you can cut back, MoneyPad is the app to use. Too much on taxis and Chipotle tacos? It can help you budget your way to a happy solvency–that includes your tacos too.
LevelMoney app shows you how much you have in your accounts and tracks your purchases in real time. Unlike MoneyPad there is no categorization option: if you are looking for accessibility and a quick financial summary LevelMoney is for you. Each day it gives you an allowance and alerts you if you go over. If you go under your budget for the month it shows the savings you’ve made and adjusts your budget if you’d like. As far as security goes, your iPhone might as well be locked in a Brinks Truck–the app uses the same encryption software as major banks.
“My New Year’s resolution is to rev up my career…”
Seeking another job is a job in itself–which is why so many people stay where they are far too long. Thankfully, Indeed is around to help you get the job done. As one of the world’s largest job sites, it allows you to upload your resume so you can apply as quickly as possible. The stripped down search beats out more complex services like Monster and LinkedIn without sacrificing an extraordinary network.
If you aren’t focusing on your career but your career is hindering your ability to work on outside projects, EasilyDo can be your savior. With EasilyDo you have access to a streamlined contacts list, a prioritized email manager and a travel itinerary manager. It can even let you know when you need to pay your bills. When the more mundane parts of life–answering emails, planning lunch, managing contacts–don’t take so long or cause so many interruptions, you’ll have more time to spend on what you love.
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~~~Ross Walker is the PR and Social Media Intern at Ideasmyth. Originally from Napa Valley, CA, he is currently a student at NYU majoring in English and minoring in creative writing. In his off time Ross tutors young writers and tours his new home in New York City, hoping someday to turn his hobbies of writing, reading and teaching into a career.
