Accountability is the best way to stay on top of your goals and ensure success. But, you've probably already done your homework about the importance of accountability in goal attainment and positive habit formation. You may even be looking at assembling your own gang of dependable accountability partners.
Meanwhile, you might be on the hunt for accountability apps to keep you on forward-moving progress this year. As an accountability coach, I get asked a lot about productivity tools and apps. I thought it was time to put together my top recommendations.
Many of the tools on this list aren't accountability apps per se, but they do help you foster daily accountability that increases your commitment levels. You can get most of these apps on your android or IOS devices. And I've categorized them into focus, wellbeing, learning, and general apps. Without further ado, let's dive right into it.
Goals apps
GoalsWon Accountability App
Many of the tools on this list can help keep you accountable, but if you're looking for a full-on accountability app, try GoalsWon. This app brings the best of to-do, goal tracking, and coaching apps into one accountability-focused platform.
It showcases all the useful elements of your favorite productivity tools. You set goals, create a to-do list, and gather data to track progress. If those aren't useful enough, you're also paired with something better than an accountability partner - a real-life professional coach.
Each day, your coach keeps you accountable and provides you with the proper feedback and advice as you break bad habits and increase your commitment levels to worthwhile goals. A premium subscription costs $2 to $3 a day.
Loop Habit Tracker
Loop's habit tracking app helps you form and maintain new habits using simple elements like progress tracking, habit scheduling, and daily reminders. It also gamifies your habit formation using a feature called "Habit Score."
Your Habit Score is based on how often you've carried out a habit, increasing or decreasing based on your consistency. Now you have more reasons to fend off procrastination and increase personal accountability.
Simple Journal
Keep your thoughts organized every day of the week with Simple Journal. This simple digital journaling app is all you need whenever you want to write something down. It has a clean interface, light and dark themes, and font customizations. It also supports images when you need put visuals in your journal entries.
TickTick
TickTick is a colorful task management app perfect for organizing your daily to dos. It has all the sweet elements of your favorite to-do apps like time management, due date tracking, general reminders, collaboration support, and notification functions. Plus, it's user-friendly and beautiful to look at, helping you achieve productivity as you progress into tasks after tasks.
Focused time apps
Forest
Forest lets you plant a virtual tree whenever you want to focus on a task. Cut out distractions and stay focused, and the tree continues to grow. Let distractions take over, and your virtual tree dies.
If that doesn't get you motivated, your actions will have real-world consequences. Growing trees earns you virtual coins the app uses to plant a real tree. It provides just the right extra accountability that can be a win-win for you and the environment.
Toggl
Toggl is a simple and convenient time tracker. Tracking starts with one simple click. And once you start, the app collects valuable data that you can later generate into a report to see your progress. It features a calendar integration tool to see time entries and upcoming events. With a seamless multi-device sync feature, tracking doesn't stop even if you're juggling between multiple devices.
Pomodoro Tracker
Come to think of it, many of the apps on this list utilize the Pomodoro technique in one way or another. Here's a tool that lets you take advantage of the Pomodoro time management technique right on your browser.
Start the Pomodoro Tracker's timer and get to work until you hear the alarm. After that, take a short 3-5-minute break, then rinse and repeat. The Pomodoro technique helps you break down huge tasks into bite-sized time blocks.
Productivity Challenge Timer
The Productivity Challenge Timer adds gamification elements to the time-tested Pomodoro time management method. You start by setting custom timers to track periods of focused work and short in-between breaks for a specific project.
It lets you set different custom timers for different projects. As you continue to use the app, you unlock achievements by completing set challenges that increase your motivation and help you create new habits.
Digital Wellbeing
Want to manage how much you spend time with technology? Digital Wellbeing will give you a closer look at your digital habits and help you promote a healthier digital diet. It gives you insights into how much and how often you use your phone's different apps.
Using these data, you can set usage limits per app and pause distracting notifications to focus more on your tasks or get a good night's rest.
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Wellbeing apps
MyFitnessPal
MyFitnessPal lets you stay on top of your daily calorie intake to ensure your weight-loss success. And you don't even have to get past the free version to take full advantage of this app. It packs a calorie counter, fitness tracker, and nutrition database to help you accomplish your physical wellness goals.
Medito
Meditation has tons of benefits for your overall well-being. And with Medito, you can become a meditation pro in no time. This free app provides clear guidance on meditation techniques through courses of varying difficulties. It also has a soothing interface and a guiding voice that promotes calmness as you go through each session.
Bloom
Mental well-being is just as important as physical (if not more). Bloom has everything you need in a therapy app to start your journey towards life-long mental wellness. This app lowers the barrier to accessing much-needed therapy.
You get video therapy sessions, guided Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy exercises, and an intuitive mood tracker. It's a great tool for combating common mental health challenges like anxiety and depression.
Eat This Much
Eat This Much makes meal planning a lot easier using a recipe database and a nutrition calculator. Nutrition experts even recommend this app! With Eat This Much, you don't need to dabble with nutritional science just to get your desired results. The app provides customized meal plans from a diverse range of healthy recipes - all for you to ensure you reach your weight and nutrition targets.
Zepp Life (Mi Fit)
Mi Fit, now known as Zepp Life, is one of the best activity apps out there. The app works with Zepp Life's smart band lineup that tracks and evaluates workout and sleep activities. You'll have to purchase a Zepp Life smart device to utilize its features. But you get an all-in-one activity tracker that monitors exercise and provides a clear view of your fitness and sleep conditions.
f.lux
You've probably heard that too much screen time can cause health drawbacks, like sleep pattern disruptions. That's where f.lux comes in. Having just the right screen brightness lets you do your best work while helping you get a good night's sleep.
f.lux allows your screen color to adapt to the time of day, letting you get the right certain amount of color temperature that doesn't make it harder for you to fall and stay asleep.
Learning apps
Anki
Improving memory allows you to learn new things a lot faster. Enter Anki, a smart program that helps you improve memory retention through flashcards. You start by creating a deck about stuff you'd like to learn about, whether geography or a new programming language. You'll then utilize a suite of useful features to help you practice retaining information at a much faster rate.
Blinkist
There is just a lot to love about nonfiction. Many of these books provide tons of value through practical knowledge. Enthralling as they may be, not everyone has the time to go through pages after pages of these incredible pieces.
Luckily, you can use apps like Blinkist to listen to useful and easy-to-digest summaries and key ideas of the books you'd like to read. You get to feed your mind at any time, anywhere.
HelloTalk
You don't have to put off that language you've always wanted to learn. HelloTalk lets you learn that with ease. How? By connecting you with actual native speakers, you can chat in real-time. And you don't get to pay money for this free app. It also offers several features, all to make it effortless and fun for you to learn a new language.
Memrise
"Learn to speak like the locals." Yep, that's the phrase they use on Memrise. This app combines language learning, memorization, and gamification to help you learn a language much faster than you normally would. It uses immersive flashcards and video tutorials to help you learn as many as 23 languages.
TED app
Who doesn't like hearing new wisdom, insights, and actionable tools from experts in their fields? It's no wonder why many can't get enough of TED talks. If you haven't yet, check out its own dedicated free app from your app store.
The TED app lets you see thousands of hyper-focused talks on your favorite topics. You also get personalized recommendations, so there's always something new in store for you.
If you're like me, who can't get enough of useful, informational articles and stories on the web, then you're going to love Pocket. This tool allows you to save any readworthy pieces from the web with a click of a button.
Now you don't have to populate your notes with countless URLs that link to blog posts, interviews, press releases, and news stories. Pocket users also get personalized recommendations based on their behaviors.
Goodreads
Are you an avid reader but can't decide which piece you'd like to flip through next? Try Goodreads. This free service helps you discover countless new books from its extensive curated library. It has 90 million members worldwide. Each can contribute by engaging in discussions with other members or leaving book reviews to help a friend find their next read.
