3 Apps to Help You Stay Productive in the New Year

I am not ashamed of the fact that I am a #goalmaker & #goaldigger. I am very much a Type A personality & while even though I’ve recently begun cutting back on the excess in my life, it’s making me work all the harder to find ways to help myself become more & continue to be productive. I get thrown off when I don’t have a good, set routine, so here are apps I’ve found to help stay productive in the new year:

Fabulous: This is a neat app that was created by Duke’s Behavioral Economics Lab. It provides ways to develop positive, healthy, daily routines & it does so in a way based on scientific behavioral studies. There are basic aspects you can do for free but I chose to upgrade because it provides a lot of other features. I especially like this app because it can help establish routines by starting with 1 little change at a time. It will start you off by drinking a glass of water first thing when you wake up. I’ve noticed the days I do this, I tend to wake up faster, feel more hydrated, & am typically in a better mood throughout the day. Once you get that habit down after a few days it adds something new. It tracks your progress daily & monthly to help you stay accountable. Each item in the routine has its own timer that helps you stay on track & in good timing. I decided to create a morning routine that I’ve found helps me get done what I need to get done each morning. It gives me plenty of time left over each morning so I’m not running out the door in the mornings.
Habits: This is another great app that helps keep you accountable for the habits you want to establish. You add individual habits to it & specify how often you want it to remind you. You also create a question it will ask you when the reminder notification pops up. Example: one of mine asks, “Did you jog today?” That way, it’s you answering to yourself…& if you don’t really want to lie to or disappoint yourself, it makes it a lot harder to mark it done if you know it’s not true. This has helped me get out of bed easy, too. One of my habits is to get up early. The question I pos with it is, “Did you get up before 4:40am?” So it acts as a motivator to get up…if I don’t get up before 4:40am, I don’t get to check it off…& for a Type A personality…that’s just sad.
Forest: This last app will help you go without distraction…for all you people who get distracted by social media & other apps on your phone. From my understanding, it is also available on desktops, also. This app works as a timer, but it also limits what apps you go to during the work time you set for yourself. At the start of the timer you “plant” a tree sapling. As the timer counts down the tree grows bigger & bigger. As long as you don’t kill it by going into one of the off-limit apps like Facebook, Instagram, & others. It rewards you by helping you focus on the task at hand & it makes you want to NOT kill your little tree. On the basic version of the app, you can collect trees you’ve grown throughout the day to build your own little forest. You can also allow certain apps to be open, ones that you need to be able to use to be productive, for me it’s ones like WordPress, my email, the camera, & Pandora. It’s like the productive version of Sims!