This month at Think Productive we’re taking a closer look at habits – setting them, tracking them, and yes, even breaking them. After trialing and testing lots of apps designed to help you set, maintain, or break habits, we’re here to share with you some of our favorites.
Operating under the taglines ‘actions speak louder than goals’ and ‘we are what we repeatedly do’, irunrun asks you to set a weight for each of your potential actions/habits. For example, you might decide that reading for thirty minutes every day is worth more than starting your morning with a cup of green tea, or vice versa. You then decide how often you wish to complete the task, and aim to reach a 100% score every week. This app adopts a playful approach to habit tracking, challenging you to maintain a perfect score.
If you’d be lost without your Apple devices, Momentum might be the habit tracker for you. Based on Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret, this is a ‘don’t break the chain’ app. Simply put, the more times you complete your daily habits, the longer your chain becomes; the longer your chain becomes, the more motivated you are to maintain it. Momentum syncs easily between a Mac and iPhone, and can even be accessed from the Apple Watch. From your phone, you can track and check off habits from the ‘Today’ view (scrolling down from the top of your screen), without even having to open up the app.
Streaks is another ‘don’t break the chain’ app, offering a clean, minimalistic layout that is especially appealing to anyone that might prefer visual cues to make habits stick. You can choose up to six tasks to transform into daily habits, limiting your goals to prevent you from over-challenging yourself. Like Momentum, it can be accessed across devices and on an Apple Watch. Unlike Momentum, it does cost – £2.99 to be exact – but if the visual element is important to you, we think it’s worth it. Plus, there’s a ‘Workout’ edition of the app, designed for anyone trying to set fitness habits!
Strides allows you to set and track habits from a variety of categories: Health & Fitness, Productivity, Education, Money, Business, Wellness, and Hobbies. You select from a number of ‘tracker types’ to specify your goals. This might mean setting a target value to be achieved by a certain date, or a number of times to complete a task per week. What’s more, Strides analyses your data and turns it into a range of charts and graphs, to give you a visual representation of your progress.
Do any of you weapon-savvy Productivity Ninjas use these apps, or any different ones? Let us know! Tweet @thinkproductive.