Crush your 2024 goals with the help of apps
As of 2023, there are over 1.8 million apps available in Apple’s App Store and over 3.7 million apps in the Google Play Store. We’re in a golden age where there is an app for nearly everything you can imagine, providing endless possibilities for entertainment, information, and connection.
Fueled by the new year’s clean slate, many of us use this time to set goals and resolutions, and you can bet there are apps that will help us crush any goal we have. There are apps that not only provide the basic tools you may need to hit a goal, but they can also inject fun, accountability, or gamification.
We went around the Pulse office and asked if anyone had any New Year’s resolutions or goals they wanted to share, and here are some of our favorites along with recommendations for apps that could help reach those goals.
Dan
Goal: Bowl another 300 game
Recommendation: PinPal (Google Play or Apple App Store) is a comprehensive scorekeeping and stats tracker for bowling sessions. Analyze strikes, spares, misses, and lane conditions to refine your strategy and improve your average. It even shows you things like what your average would be if you picked up all your single pin spares, or what spares you leave the most.
Lindsey
Goal: To stop the mindless scroll and do something real – read a book, actually watch a show, cross something off my to-do list.
Recommendations: Forest is a digital detox app. Plant a virtual tree when you want to stay focused on a chosen task. As you work (aka stay off your phone), the tree grows. However, if you check your phone, the tree will die. Keeping your tree alive and thriving adds a gamified incentive to stay off your phone, and over time you can grow an entire forest.
StoryGraph is an app for tracking and rating your reading. It is acclaimed for its simple interface and insightful stats of your reading habits as well as its ability to make personalized recommendations. Some other reasons to use StoryGraph include its innovative read-with-friends feature and its comprehensive filtering system that allows you to discover books by mood.
Calvin
Goal: To climb Longs Peak
Recommendation: AllTrails is a fitness and travel app for outdoor recreational activities. It includes a massive database of trail maps, which includes crowdsourced reviews and images. Not only can Calvin download the maps for his goal hike, he can use AllTrails for finding lots of training and endurance-building hikes and even recommendations for gear.
Kerrilyn
Goal: Take a vacation to Italy
Recommendations: Start learning some basic Italian as soon as possible with apps like Duolingo or Babbel. Google Translate (Google Play or Apple App Store) has a free app that has a great feature that will translate whatever text it identifies through your camera – it’s especially helpful for signs, menus, and product labels.
As you look for apps that will best suit you, it’s helpful to consider your goals and preferences. For example:
- What kind of goals are you trying to achieve? (Health, fitness, productivity, personal development, financial, etc.)
- What motivates you? (Do you need rewards, gamification, social accountability, or something else?)
- What are your tech preferences? (Do you prefer simple interfaces, detailed data tracking, or something in between?)
- Are there any specific areas (like habit tracking or budgeting) where you’d like extra support?
You can search the web or app store for recommendations after you’ve thought about these questions. Most apps have a free trial period for you to see if it’s a good fit.
We hope you’re feeling inspired to crush your 2024 goals and resolutions! You’ve got this!
