The 8 Best Habit Tracking Apps in 2019
- Hey what is up guys?
So in today's video we're gonna be taking a look
at one of my favorite types of apps in the entire world,
the humble habit tracker.
This very simple type of app helps you
to build strong habits or break bad ones
by leveraging what's been called
the don't break the chain strategy.
For some reason when our brains see
that we have done something for a long period of time
or haven't done something
for the same long period of time,
we don't wanna break the chain,
we don't wanna break the pattern.
So essentially a habit tracker just lets you check off
whether or not you've done something every single day
and over time you get a visual indication of your progress
and that keeps you motivated
to keep progressing in the right direction.
Now since habit trackers are very simple,
they're also not that difficult to make
in comparison to other apps
and as a result there are a ton of them out there
whether you're on iOS, Android,
or just looking for a web app version.
So what we're gonna do today is I'm gonna share my picks
for the top eight habit trackers
that deserve your attention here in 2019.
And for an app to make my list,
it has to do something beyond
just letting you check off whether or not you did a habit,
it has to bring something unique to the table
and without further ado
let's just jump into the number eight pick on my list
which is called Habitify.
Now Habitify makes my list because it is very well designed.
In fact, across all the apps that I tested for this video,
I found Habitify's combination of simplicity
and really nice UI
to be at least the most attractive to my eyes
and in addition to that it is also cross-platform,
you're gonna find it on Android, iOS, iPad,
and there's even a Mac app as well.
Additionally, you're gonna find features like a dark mode,
lots of fancy charts and graphs to track your progress
and if you are an iOS person,
you're gonna find Apple watch apps,
a widget for your iPhone home screen,
even an iMessage app as well
which I have not seen in any other app that I've looked at.
Next up on my list is an app called HabitHub
which gains the distinction
of being the only Android exclusive app to make this list.
Now a lot of the other apps
I'm gonna talk about in a little bit have Android versions
but this is the only Android exclusive
so if you're an Android person and you wanna
lord it over your iPhone friends
that you got an app that they can't use,
well this is probably the one
that you're gonna wanna pick.
HabitHub also has a really nice design
and it has a couple of other features
that I really enjoyed as well
including the ability to have goals for your habit streaks
so you can do things like having a 30-day challenge
and the ability to mark a habit as skipped
instead of just failed.
So if you had a business trip
or you found yourself sick for some reason,
you could mark something as skipped,
you could add a note to it to explain why you had to skip it
and you're gonna get a visual indication
of it being skipped rather than just failed
or not marked altogether.
That brings us to number six on the list which is TickTick
and TickTick isn't really a purpose-built habit tracker,
it's actually a full-fledged task management/to-do app
that is very similar to Todoist
and I actually talked about it in my video
on the best task management apps since 2019
which you'll find linked in description down below
if you haven't seen that
but now they have actually integrated
a habit tracker into the app and for a really long time,
I've been getting questions from all kinds of people
asking me, Tom is there a task management app out there
that also integrates a habit tracker
and for the longest time,
my answer to that question has been no
or at least I don't know of one.
But now TickTick has filled that void
so if you wanna have your task management
and your habit tracking living in one place,
in the same app, on the same screen,
TickTick is gonna be what you probably wanna go with
for both of those purposes.
Now if you are one of those people
who wants a little bit more complexity
in your habit tracking,
then you might want to pay attention
to number five on my list which is Beeminder.
And yes, I've talked about Beeminder
many, many times in this channel,
it was most recently profiled in my video
on apps that force you to work
so I'm not gonna talk too much about Beeminder
but in case you haven't heard of it,
it is an app that allows you to essentially
put money on the line to ensure that you do your habits
and in addition to that financial incentive part of the app,
there is just a lot of data in Beeminder.
You can look at all these crazy charts and graphs,
you can see all of your data points,
you can get really, really nerdy with this app
and it also holds the distinction of being the app
that can pull in data from the largest amount of sources
that I've ever seen.
It can pull on Apple health data,
it can pull on data from all kinds
of other quantified self-apps
and it can even connect up to IFTTT
which can basically let you pull data from literally
any other service in the world
that you can probably think of
through some weird combination of home automation
Python scripts and whatever it is
you programming nerds like to build out there,
you can probably use it to shove data into Beeminder.
But let's say for a second that all that data
is not the top priority for you
because you are a person of culture,
you are a person who prides and values aesthetics
over everything else.
Well if that is the case and if you have an iPhone
'cause the one we're gonna talk about here
is an iOS exclusive,
then you may want to look at number four on the list
which is called Today.
Today is a beautiful app, in fact,
it might even be a little bit too beautiful for my taste.
In fact, the reason that it's not a little bit higher
on this list is because I feel
some of the aesthetics get in the way
of using the app really quickly and efficiently.
That being said, it is a very capable habit tracker
under the hood in addition to all the nice design and UI
and it even packs in some features for free
that other apps charge you monthly subscription fee for.
Now of course you can do all the basics,
you can add habits, you can check them off,
you can do multiple check-ins per day
but you can also set specific covers for your habits
so you get that nice little splash screen for each one
and one thing that I'd really like
is that for each habit you can add
what are called custom cards to the data area for the habit
and well, it can't pull in your Apple health data
to actually hold your feet to the fire like Beeminder can,
so you can't do something like having a walking goal
and then pulling in your steps data to check it off
or not check it off, you can add in Apple health data
for some extra context for your habits
which is a really nice touch.
Plus Today is just pretty, did I mention that?
All right, I will stop gushing about Today's design.
Let's move on to number three on the list
which is Coach.me and I didn't put it on there
'cause it rhymes though that is a nice little coincidence.
So Coach.me is actually the first habit tracker
that I ever used back when I was using it,
it was called Lift,
though it has since rebranded to Coach.me
and as you might imagine
there is now a coaching component to the app
and that is actually what makes it pretty unique.
Now at its core, Coach.me is a very capable habit tracker,
you can add in your habits, you can check them off,
there's nice high-five animations sometimes
but there's also a big community element to the app as well
both in the form of coaching
and in the form of a simple community with discussions.
So for any habit that you add to your list,
if it is a common habit,
there's probably gonna be questions
and discussion threads for those questions from other users.
You can use that to get tips and additional motivation.
If that discussion area isn't enough for you,
you can also go over to the coaching section of the app
which is where it gets its namesake
and for a lot less money than I've seen
in almost any other coaching venue
that I've come across online,
you can get personalized check-ins with coaches
for basically any habit that you're trying to build
or goal that you're trying to achieve.
Now if I had to guess, I would say you probably get
a little less personalized attention,
a little less time than you'd get with an actual coach
but a lot of people don't need
a ton of personalized attention,
a lot of people don't need to pay $60
for an hour of a coach's time.
Some people just need to be able
to check in with somebody a couple of times a week
and just have someone there to keep them on track
and that's the need that this app fills.
All right, homestretch baby,
we are on to number two on the list
and it is what has been my favorite habit tracker,
my habit tracker of choice for a very long time,
it's called Strides and it is unfortunately
an iOS exclusive once again
but hey, the Android people got HabitHub
so you can't complain too much, right?
So at least on the surface, I would say that Strides
is pretty similar to Habitify.
Both have really clean professional UIs,
both are very fast, they're snappy, they are a joy to use.
But where Habitify is a little bit more rigid
in the types of goals that you can set up and track,
Strides is more flexible, it has some additional options
for the types of habits that you can set up within it.
For one, you can set up street goals
which are great for things like 30-day challenges
and you can also set goals to be either yes or no,
did you do them, did you not,
or based on a certain quantity of things,
so if you wanna take like 10,000 steps a day,
you could actually type in that number
if you really wanted to
but the feature that I like the most about Strides
and this is something that I have not seen
in any other habit tracker that I've tested
is the ability to track an average for a specific habit.
So if you want to make sure
you're not playing too many hours of video games each week
or you wanna just track the number of times
you go to the gym
which you don't have a specific goal for it,
this is a great feature and I love it.
But not as much as I love the number one app on this list
which is of course Habitica.
In my humble opinion, Habitica goes beyond
all other habit trackers out there
because instead of just letting you track your habits,
it lets you turn your life into a bonafide video game.
Habitica is basically an RPG
with habit tracking elements built in
and instead of just working on yourself,
you're working on yourself
while also building up a character in the game
that can go on quests and party up with people
and get mounts and all kinds of gear
and all kinds of fun stuff.
Now I will readily admit that I am a nerd
and not everyone out there is a nerd,
maybe you're not a nerd.
- Nerd!
- So Habitica is not for everyone,
there's a lot going on in that game,
there's all kinds of stats and buffs
and all kinds of crazy stuff
which is why I made this list.
There's seven other picks on the list that you could go for
if you want something a little bit more simple
but in my experience, all of the gamification elements
that are built in to Habitica are really, really motivating.
If you get into the game,
then you really don't want to fail on your habits
'cause you're trying to build up some gold
to get a new piece of gear or you're trying to level up
so you can actually cast more powerful spells
or, and I think this is the most genius part of Habitica,
you can actually party up with other people,
real-life humans, and you can go on quests
and fight bosses together and when you are fighting a boss,
at the end of each day that boss is going to attack you
and it will never damage you
unless somebody in your party fails to do their habits
or if they mark off a negative habit
like smoking a cigarette or eating junk food.
If people don't stick to what they're supposed to be doing,
everyone in the group gets hurt
and if you run out of health and die,
you actually lose a piece of gear
so there's this great accountability element to Habitica
that a lot of other habit trackers just don't have.
Plus in contrast to a lot of the other
habit tracking apps out there,
all the core habit tracking functionality
in Habitica is free.
If you get really into the game,
you can buy gems for certain purposes
or you can actually donate directly to the team if you want
but all of the habit tracking features,
those don't cost anything to use
and this is something that I really respect about Habitica.
That and the fact that I can put
a pair of steampunk goggles and a top hat on my character.
Now no matter which habit tracker you do choose to go with,
one habit that should probably be on it
is taking some time to do some independent learning each day
and that's something that you can easily do
with the daily challenges feature on Brilliant.
Each day new challenges are posted
that can test and stretch your problem-solving skills
in areas like calculus, physics, computer science,
statistics, astronomy, and much more.
And if a particular problem piques your interest,
you'll also find dozens of full-fledged in-depth courses
in Brilliant's course library
that can improve your knowledge even further.
Each course uses the principle of active learning
to help you learn as effectively as possible
while keeping your level of interest high at the same time
so if you want to start boosting your problem-solving skills
on a daily basis which can help improve your job prospects
and even help you become more creative,
then head over to Brilliant.org/ThomasFrank
and sign up for free.
Free account gets you access
to new daily challenges every single day
and if you do decide to go for their premium subscription,
you're gonna get access
to their entire daily challenges archive
with lots more problems to sink your teeth into
and all their in-depth courses as well.
Plus if you're one of the first 200 people to sign up
using that link which you'll find
down in the description below
you're also gonna get 20% off
that annual premium subscription.
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