Let’s face it: if you haven’t finished your shopping and sent out your holiday cards by this time, it might just be too late. Starting to wish you were more organized and on top of this things? Or maybe you’re already starting to realize that you haven’t exercised as much as you meant to in preparation for the cake and cookies of the holiday season?
The time has come to give up and start thinking about next year. That’s right, it’s time to get started on New Year’s resolutions. Although Consumer-Rankings.com doesn’t have any in-depth reviews of these yet, I’ve got some recommendations for free sites that will help you stick to those resolutions for once.
I’ve excluded sites that help with specific goals, like weight loss, exercise, finances or quitting smoking. There are just way too many of them and I’d like to think that some of us have more creative and unique resolutions that may require more generic encouragement.
The most brilliantly simple site I found is hassleme.co.uk. As an explanation, they’re tagline is “Because sometimes in life, you just need to be nagged…” Says it all, I think. You just type in what you want to be nagged about and approximately how often. They will then send you an email reminder to check if you’ve done what you were supposed to. The trick is that they don’t send the email completely predictably. You never know when you’re going to be hit with that guilt inducing reminder, so you have to be ready for the surprise at all times.
The next site is for those of us who really need accountability and human encouragement in order to get anything done. Startaresolution.com assigns you a coach who is working on their own resolution and in turn assigns you to coach someone else via email and messages through the site. You earn points by being on the site, interacting with people and tracking your resolution.
My personal favorite is for those of us who are either very competitive or like to break our goals down into smaller tasks. On Joesgoals.com you can list as many resolutions as you’d like to work on and as many bad habits as you’d like to break. Every day, you mark off which daily goal you’ve achieved that day and which of your vices you’ve indulged in. Each of these gains or loses you a point and you can track your score over time, including your weekly and 30-day average. For those goals that may not be easily divided into daily tasks, you can also keep a log to record your progress even though it won’t add to your daily score.
Just looking at these sites has gotten me motivated, and now I just hope it lasts. Good luck!
