An App Whose Goal is to Help You Achieve Yours

August 12, 2013

The goal tracking app Way of Life aims to help you meet your goals by providing you a way to track your progress and visualize trends. But does it actually work?

Goal Tracking

?Photo credit: Ed Donahue / Flickr

To meet your goals, Lifehacker recommends a 3-part plan of attack: Focus, Plan, and Track. Way of Life tackles the final step by helping you track your goals with colors—green (yes, I am awesome because I exercised!), red (eh, I was lazy today), and blue (freebie!).

Do You Know What You're Worth?

Way of Life is related to Jerry’s Seinfeld’s method to end procrastination, which our blog recently introduced to you. (And yes, there’s a web app for that, too.) It’s also similar to a pen and paper method that I have been using since the beginning of 2013. Seven months of data recorded with my primitive method looks like this:

pen and paper

My method, Seinfeld’s, and Way of Life are all simple to use and help us visualize our progress and maintain motivation. Way of Life has some added benefits. Here’s how that same seven months of data is presented with Way of Life:

Way of Life graph Way of Life month

Added Benefits of “Way of Life” App:

See ranges of data spanning from one week to two years.
Data is displayed in graphs so you can easily see trends.
Helps you to visualize your achievements and progress, increasing motivation to continue.
Notifications help you remember to both engage in the task and record it in the app.

Of course with any app, “Way of Life” also has some downsides.

Downsides of “Way of Life” App:

Only for the iPhone.
No web interface.
No tactile satisfaction. It feels good to write down the exercise that I did each day, just like crossing items off of a to-do list.

Conclusion: No method of goal tracking is going to make you skinny or stop checking Facebook at work. You still have to put in the effort. Tracking your goals will help you visualize your accomplishments, illuminate what is happening over time, and maintain your motivation to keep it up. Way of Life does all the heavy-lifting in that regard, so you can focus your energy on actually accomplishing your goals.

Need help getting started on your career goals? PayScale will hook you up with tools, articles, and a to-do list to help you get hired, get a promotion, or change careers.

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