MakeUseOf » resolutions

Increase Your Resolution Beyond Monitor’s Limit With newrez [Linux]

Danny Stieben — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:30:59 +0000

I’m sure that you’ve come across a computer like this, especially a laptop or netbook. The screen is decently large, but the low resolution doesn’t seem to fit well with such a nice screen. Or maybe you’re on a smaller screen, but the correspondingly small resolution causes a couple of headaches when certain applications love to hide their buttons outside of the screen.

So are you stuck with whatever the native resolution is? Apparently not, as there is a simple script that will take care of the problem and increase your monitor resolution beyond what your system considers as normal!

Before You Begin

Please note that the script we are going to be using for this is dependent on a Linux technology called Xrandr, which will do the scaling necessary so that the larger resolution will still fit on your screen. However, the author of the script warns that the “non-free” graphics drivers from AMD and nVidia currently do not support the version of Xrandr needed to do these things.

Therefore, trying to run this script while using those drivers should be done at your own risk, and no results are guaranteed. However, since this script is most beneficial for netbook users, the chance of this issue occurring is slim as there is rarely a need for those non-free drivers on such a low-powered device.

Download and Installation

To get started, you’ll need to head over to this page and download the .tar.gz file. Then extract the the two files found inside into your home//.gnome2/nautilus-scripts folder. You can see hidden folders in Nautilus by hitting Ctrl + H after you open your Home folder with it. That’s all you have to do for the installation!

Running the Script

To launch the script, you can right-click inside either a Nautilus window or on your desktop. Under Scripts, you’ll find the newrez scripts. I advise that you choose newrez, and only newrez-v if you have issues with the former.

You’ll be presented with a window that will ask you for your new horizontal width. From there, it will take care of the rest. It will calculate the appropriate vertical width to maintain the same aspect ratio. Within a few seconds, you should have your new resolution, ready to go.

Before the script finishes, it’ll ask you if you’d like a launcher so that you can have one click access to your new resolution as the change isn’t permanent. You can also take the contents of the launcher and have the command run during start-up so that you won’t even have to use the launcher to get your new resolution.

Don’t be surprised if the higher resolution isn’t any sharper, as the monitor’s physical resolution is still the same. However, your workspace should be a lot bigger, letting you do more with the space that you have.

In order to go back to the normal resolution without restarting the system, you can run the newrez script again but enter in your normal horizontal width, and you’ll be returned to your normal, native resolution.

Conclusion

For netbooks, this is a great way to get some more space out of your screen to see more of whatever applications you’re running. While less effective, you can also use the script on your desktops with its large screens. If you’re daring enough, you could technically use this script even if you have a 2560 x 1600 monitor, to gain a resolution of 3000+ and make your enormous workspace even larger.

What do you think about newrez? Would this trick be helpful for you on netbooks? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Test Your New Year Resolutions With These 5 Email In The Future Services

Saikat Basu — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:31:09 +0000

There’s always a tragic story behind our New Year resolutions and goal setting endeavors. Reams have been written on how to stick to resolutions. So, let me try to add a few pages here with a slightly different take on email in the future services. Emailing yourself in the future could serve as reminders to alert you about sticking to the path.

You can also use these future emails to create tiny time capsules. For e.g. if you have losing weight as a goal, you can post a photo of your current girth and then open it as a future date to see whether you shed the weight or the goal. Of course, there’s no guarantee that the service will stick around in a year’s time, but suddenly being reminded of your goals sometimes helps to jolt that laziness off your bones.

Lettermelater

Lettermelater is a rich tool that allows you to create HTML emails, add attachments (photos), and even send it from within your default email account. The service allows you to set a future date, down to the last minute, when the letter will get delivered. You can also specify CC and BCC recipients; helpful if you are part of a group that’s mentoring each other towards a goal. But the feature I like is Lettermelater gives you the option to set up multiple recurring emails by selecting a range and interval, or selecting the dates individually.

FutureMe

With FutureMe, you don’t have to log-in before sending out an email into the future. You can choose to go anonymous and put your emails into public view. The collection of public FutureMe emails is an interesting read. The mail interface lacks a rich text editor, but you can include pictures (webcam snaps or from the desktop) with your emails. Maybe, you can just ask yourself if you are still alive after December 2012. Keeping yourself alive inspite of the foreboding predictions of the Mayans could be a nice New Year resolution.

Eternity Message

The About Me page says something about the original intention of the site – We had originally written the application to capture our thoughts, experiences, and life lessons so those could be shared with our children.

The service uses a secure protocol and the servers store the future messages – they are not sent out as emails. Recipients receive a notification to view the future message on the site itself. An early warning notification is also sent to the sender 3 days prior to the actual delivery. Eternity Message comes in two versions – a paid one which allows you to send messages 60 years into the future and a free Lite version that allows you to send the email up to 1 year in the future and to a single person. The message has to stay within 1000 characters – that should be enough for a New Year resolution.

Email Future

Schedule a goals-to-achieve email in the future with this text only service and pat yourself in one year’s time when you can tick off a few from your 2012 New Year resolution’s list. You can also send it to four other addresses if you want to gloat about your achievements one year down the line. Of course, there’s a high chance that you could also have four eggs on your face. Email Future allows you to set a private or public (anonymous) permission.

Mail Freezr

Put your future emails in ice-cold storage and bring them back to live on January 1^st, next year. You can freely freeze your emails for any period between 1 – 100 years, so you are probably safe if you put down your resolutions for the year and check them out next year.

2012 will be soon over. The future will come soon enough. List out your goals using these services and when you get the mail from the past in your inbox, you can either gloat or regret that you let another year pass by without ticking off a few from your goals list. Are you using a geeky way to set your New Year resolutions? Or are they already lying in the waste basket?

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Can You Break Or Start A Habit In Only 21 Days?

Bakari Chavanu — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:01:57 +0000

The beginning of the year is always a good time to set new resolutions and break old habits, to make this year better than the last. I’ve recently wrote about a couple of good websites for goal setting and monitoring New Year resolutions. But a few Amazon and Microsoft engineers and developers teamed up to develop another web application designed to help break old habits or create new ones.

Their recently released a site is called 21habit.com, which is simple to use, but includes a little incentive that might make you stick to your goal.

How It Works

If you’re going to break a habit, it typically needs to be done in a reasonably short amount of time. The longer you take to break (or gain) the habit, the less likely you are to achieve your goal. With 21habit, you simply write the habit you want to break (or begin) and check in daily to the site to indicate whether you met your goal for that day. When you click the start button, you can register on the site or use your Facebook account to log in.

Most of us have at least one bad habit we would like to break but never get around to doing it. A bad habit might include nail biting, smoking, spending too much time on the computer or Facebook, procrastinating, spending too much money, gambling, watching too much television, not eating the right foods, etc. You might also want to start an habit, such reading a book on a daily basis, or going to bed at a certain time each night.

As with any goal, make sure your habit is something that you control, and is one that you can work toward each day.

Daily Monitoring

When you set a habit to break, 21habit will send an email each day for 21 days (or you can check into your account) to verify if you failed or succeeded in doing what you said you would do.

So if your habit is to quit smoking, this method works great, because most likely smoking is something you do everyday. But if your goal is to say stay away from your computer at least one day per week, 21habit might not the best way to monitor that goal on a daily basis, because for at least 6 days of the week you will be on your computer.

Committed vs. Free Mode

21habit includes an incentive, “Committed”, feature for breaking your stated habit. It requires you to invest $21 (using PayPal or credit card) that will be donated to one of five charities – American Red Cross, Amnesty International, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and United Way.

Each day that you fail your habit, $1 of your invested $21 goes to a charity. Personally I think I would be more motivated to have my $1 go to a charity each time I succeed in breaking my habit or reaching my goal. I think users should get the option for how they want their investment to be used.

21habit says that, “You have 3 days to check-in for a specific day. If, after 3 days, you haven’t checked-in then you will forfeit $1 for that day, and we’ll donate that $1 to charity.” You can end a habit or withdraw invested funds at any time, so basically this commitment is based on the honor code.

You can also use the Free Mode, which requires no investment.

Send Them Feedback

So far, 21habit has received a lot of positive feedback on Facebook and Twitter. The system is simple and easy to ease, and the charity donation feature may be a good motivation for many users. However, there are probably many other features that users will probably want to see made to 21habit.

First off, this online service would make for a great mobile phone app whereby you could check-in and verify your progress with a simple one or two taps. Also, 21habits only allows you to only do one habit at time, pledge only $21 at time, and commit to no more or no less than 21 days per goal. However, the site is requesting your feedback on these limitations. Click to their FAQ page to give email feedback on these issues.

Let us know what you think of 21habit.com. Is it a site that you might use to help with one of your New Year resolutions?

3 Tactics To Really Make Your New Year’s Resolutions Stick

James Bruce — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 21:30:49 +0000

New Years Resolutions are generally well intentioned attempts to kickstart ourselves into learning something new, losing weight, or saving money. Realistically though, they’re exceptional if they aren’t forgotten by February.

In fact, we’re now one week into the new year and how many of you actually stuck to your goals (or even bothered with them at all this year)?

But seriously now, let’s make this year the one where we really stick to our well made plans and finally achieve something worthwhile. Agreed? Read on for 3 solid ways to make those resolutions truly stick and make a difference in your lives.

Actionable Goals, not vague nonsense

The trouble with most of our New Years Resolutions are that they tend to be rather vague:

Save $10,000
Learn some Chinese
Work out everyday

As any entrepreneur and serious self-improvement guru types will tell you, these are useless. They don’t describe anything about the steps needed to get to that goal, and things like “learn some Chinese” don’t even define a specific endpoint. Although specific goals such as “save $10,000” are admirable, they sadly aren’t actionable – meaning there isn’t a specific, defined action you can take to work towards that goal (other than say, moving $10,000 from your checking to savings account, in which case you probably don’t need to make that a resolution anyway). No, no, these will never do. Instead, make your goals into smaller daily or weekly actionable items – like these:

Save $200 every week
Complete one full Rosetta Stone Chinese session everyday
Do 20 wall push-ups everyday
Do 30 minutes of aerobic exercise everyday

Can you see the difference? We’re still saving $10,000 a year, but it’s something we can check the action for every week, or tick off every day.

If you’re having trouble thinking of some specific actionable items for your vague goals, check out anti-resolution from MeYouHealth. It’s a simple web app that’ll present you with some real, actionable items after you’ve selected your vague goal.

Now, you should have a much better resolution list consisting of many small, finite actions that you can check off as you complete each day. The next step then, is to track your progress.

Tracking Progress

Tracking your activities, or how much progress is being made in the case of weight loss etc, is in itself a huge motivator. In fact, it’s often said that simply measuring your waist every day is a great way to lose weight as it makes you eat more consciously. Here’s a mixed bag variety of tools that I think might help you, but remember that a trusty Excel/Google Docs spreadsheet can work just as well sometimes.

EpicWin (iTunes Link – $1.99)

This is my personal tool of choice, and can be summarized as a comprehensive to-do list with RPG game elements. After having created your character and added some repeating actions with associated point value, you hold the action for a few seconds to trigger some battle music and complete the item, thereby adding the points, maybe levelling up, and possibly even finding some loot!

Ok, so there is no actual roleplay ‘game’ in that there are no real fights or adventuring, but it’s a lot more fun than simply ticking off a daily item, and you could even compete with friends if you agreed on point values I guess. Check out the awesome video:

1daylater.com

If your goals revolve around spending time on a task or saving money daily, this might be the perfect tool for you. The interface is incredibly simple and allows you to track multiple projects with ease.

DailyTodo.org

A single purpose web app that would be great for your homepage. Unfortunately, it literally only tracks daily actions, so if you have weekly or monthly actions then forget it. Very simple, very fast.

GoalBot

We covered this in the directory before – it allows you to break down large goals or projects into a number of smaller steps, rather than a repeating daily task, as well as having social features. The interface isn’t exactly friendly though.

Still Got No Ideas?

If you’re in the mood for some change but really don’t have anything specific in mind, try the Daily Challenge. Saikat covered this in depth last year, but basically the system will email you random challenges every day which you can either skip or complete in one click.

Get Motivated!

Even with specific small steps to our goals, it’s often easy to forget to do them for a day, then another day, until ultimately we just don’t care anymore. No amount of web apps is going to help you there, but it does help to be in the mental state of constantly thinking about self improvement. Sign up to some newsletters or RSS feeds from motivational speakers and self improvement experts to keep yourself on track and motivated to complete your goals.

When I was first into self-improvement, Steve Pavlina was a big influence and motivation for me, and while his blog is still active it does seem to have moved away from the core teaching lately. I highly recommend the old podcasts and article archives though.

TheChangeBlog is a great general-purpose self improvement blog with a fantastic zen design to help you focus on the fantastic advice within (like learning how to set specific goals!)

That’s all from me today, as I’m busy sticking to my rigorous new daily action schedule! Don’t forget to check out all our other Self Improvement tagged posts too. Here’s wishing you all the best – happiness, health and prosperity this year! If you’ve found some other great tracking tools or motivational podcasts etc, do please share with us all in the comments – or maybe you’re brave enough to tell us your new year resolutions?

How To Set & Accomplish Your New Year Resolutions For 2012

Bakari Chavanu — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:01:28 +0000

We all know that making New Year’s resolutions is a useful way of getting things done and achieving particular goals; however, setting them is easier than actually doing them. Typically by March what we resolve to achieve fades away like a dream as we get distracted by our daily routines. But in the last several years, I have found that if I make a list of ten or more personal goals, I will achieve at least a few of them.

The key to accomplishing my goals is making them practical and measurable. But most importantly, your goals need to have a start and end date, and you must be reminded of your progress. Three websites, LifeStick.com, Solidgoals.net, and 43Things.com might be helpful in this regard. But before we turn to these, a simple calendar and e-mail reminder may suffice.

Calendar Method

If you’re not keen on joining yet another website, you can simply use Google Calendar or some similar application for setting up reminders about the goals you set. Simply resolving that you’re going to lose 10 pounds in three months is not enough. You need to make a plan to accomplish that goal, and you want to make progress toward that goal on a daily or weekly basis.

SolidGoals.net

SolidGoals.com is an easy to use and free website for creating goals, setting tasks and milestones, and reminders. After registering on the site, you can immediately start setting up goals and setting deadlines.

SolidGoals.com also includes social network integration (including Facebook) in which you can follow other goal setters and provide comments about what they seek to accomplish.

The key to using this site however is to set up a preparation list, milestones and e-mail reminders, especially for goals that are not integrated into your daily routine.

LifeTick.com

LifeTick.com has more professional features set up for individuals and professionals who coach others in related goal setting activities. While the free version only allows you to set up four goals with e-mail, smartphone, and iCalendar support, the service could still be very useful for more challenging and long-range personal goals.

LifeTick.com starts off by asking you to define your core values, such as lifelong learning, family, creativity, work, and relaxation. When you set up a goal you connect them to one of your core values which gives it more meaning.

A useful feature in setting goals on LifeTick it reminds you that your goal should be S.M.A.R.T.—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Specific.

You can also set up individual tasks to accomplish toward your goal, and receive designated e-mail reminders for your deadlines.

LifeTick also has an iPhone and Android web-based app (found here —not from the App Store) which can be useful for managing and keeping current on your goals.

43Things.com

We have written about 43Things.com before but it is worth mentioning again as the site is useful for brainstorming a healthy list of resolutions – both small and large – and accomplishing them as you see fit.

Based on my own experience, it is quite easy to set up goals on 43Things.com and then forget about it. So again the key to using this site is to set up regular e-mail reminders for designated goals, or even use an Automator hack, or similar automation program that opens the website for you on a regular basis so you can review the goals you set.

The beauty of using 43Things is looking back over your list of accomplishments and writing reflections about how you did or did not achieve a particular goal. Dedicated users of the service can help one another stick to their resolutions.

Members of 43Things are already setting New Year’s resolutions for 2012. Some of the top goals include losing weight, reading books, getting more sleep, and taking charge of personal finances.

What are your New Year resolutions so far? Do you have a website or other resource you use to keep track of your resolutions? Let us know about it.

For other ideas on goal setting, check out 100 Things to Do Before I Die: 6 Sites To Create Your Own List.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Have New Year’s Resolutions? Here Are 5 Inspiring Pieces To Keep You Motivated

Jessica Cam Wong — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:31:53 +0000

If you’ve been preparing a New Year’s resolution list and need a little push, there are many sites that can easily inspire and excite you. There are also numerous inspirational blogs that you can take a look at, from hilarious blogs like The Chive to actual quote encyclopedias, such as Quote Stumbler, which lets you stumble upon a random quote every time you visit the page. There are even social networks where you can discover and share countless quotes that catch your attention. There are also many RSS feeds you can subscribe to for daily inspiration.

I think you get the idea that there may be unique sources of inspiration for different people. Sometimes, you may find them not just in quotes, but also images and videos. Here are a few select media items that might just give you a bit of the directional boost that you’re looking for.

Photo by Jason Keath

Have your list of resolutions? This simple photo might help you face the potential obstacles coming your way in 2012.

Warhawk Matt Scott In Nike ‘No Excuses’ Commercial

This is an epic commercial, featuring basketball player Matt Scott from the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater, giving a glimpse of the excuses that might set us back when trying to reach your goals.

Henry Ford

This was originally featured in a post from the ever-popular The Chive, which occasionally throws in inspirational quotes and images.

Jason McElwain’s Basketball Story

This inspiring story about a high school basketball team manager with autism shows that a lot of passion can help you overcome obstacles, achieve the unimaginable and lead you farther than you think.

How far, you ask? I don’t want to spoil the video for you, but let’s just say Jason was able to meet the President of the United States after his story went on the news. Passion is definitely key to keeping you motivated in order to complete a task in your New Year’s Resolutions.

Age Is Just A Number

If one of your resolutions includes to exercise more in an effort to become healthier, here’s a cool video that shows you can become a more active person at any time. You don’t need the latest equipment or a personal trainer.The key is to stick to a routine. Watch the following video as the interviewee reveals his age and shows off the body of a 20-year old.

If what you want is to find quotes or inspiring items specific to a theme, we have gathered some excellent sources of inspiration for all types of niches, including creative writers, entrepreneurs and business owners, parents, and even hackers. If perhaps you’re seeking advice to help you accomplish the tasks on your New Year’s Resolutions, here are six useful online tools, and another six websites here.

If you haven’t completed your list of resolutions, here are some more tips on finding manageable and worthy tasks, and here is a simple but effective way to organize those tasks so you’ll have a nice way to visualize your goals for 2012.

How are you keeping yourself motivated to complete your New Year’s Resolutions? Let us know in the comments!

Image credit: Shutterstock

Take Fantastic Full Resolution Pictures With Vignette [Android 1.5+]

Erez Zukerman — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 18:31:14 +0000

As I told you on my Little Photo review, I am hunting for the perfect camera application for Android. Today’s contender is called Vignette; it’s a commercial application which currently retails for $4 on the Market – not inexpensive for an Android app. But with an average rating of 4.1 out of over 5,400 reviews, it must be doing something right. I have been using it as my primary camera app for the last three weeks or so, and here are some of my thoughts.

Capturing Images

Above you can see two screenshots of the capture interface. Sadly, the way Vignette pulls in camera data doesn’t allow for screenshots of the live preview screen (hence the black background). If you compare it to the Camera360 capture interface, it appears almost spartan. The screenshot on the left shows the selective focus/radial menu feature. When you tap anywhere on the screen, this large circular menu appears around your finger. Drag to the top, and the image will be refocused on that point. Drag to the bottom, and the capture options are shown (screenshot on the right).

But just because the interface is minimalistic, doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful. Unlike Little Photo, the capture stage here isn’t an afterthought. For instance, look at how many different capture modes you get.

Some of these bear explanation. “Blind” is the weirdest one. You get no live preview; the screen just goes black, and you’re supposed to aim your phone as best as you can, and snap an image. Perhaps it’s for times when you’re not supposed to be taking pictures, or for getting spontaneous shots. “Steady shot” tries to figure out when the phone is shaking and moving fast, and waits for you to hold it steady before taking the picture. The others are fairly self-explanatory.

Next, let’s take a look at the camera control options:

This gives you very explicit control over your phone’s camera; not many apps let you set the exposure compensation, for example.

Next, before moving onto post-production, let’s take a look at the file settings screen:

Here you can see one of my favorite features: Vignette can capture full-resolution images, and is beefy enough to apply effects to them. A 5-megapixel image is large (around 2MB). You can also control the quality, folder, and naming convention.

Okay, now let’s capture an image and try applying some effects.

Post-Production

My serious-looking cat, Ivan, will serve as our model for evaluating post-production and effects. Here’s the raw image, captured using Vignette, before applying any effects:

Now, let’s look at the effect interface:

This is one of Vignette’s weakest points. The effects are actually very powerful (and numerous), but there is no instant preview! If you don’t know what a certain effect does, you just have to apply it, go to the image, view it, and go back to apply a different effect. Quite a laborious process really; perhaps Vignette can learn something from Little Photo’s elegant effect interface with its instant live preview and transparent menu.

Interface considerations aside, Vignette offers a boatload of possible effects, neatly sorted into categories:

I decided to go for an over-saturated looks, accentuating Ivan’s eyes:

Another key difference between Vignette and Little Photo is that you can’t apply multiple effects all at once. You need to pick just one; but once you pick it, you can heavily customize it:

For instance, I wanted to add some extra vignetting to the effect I selected, as well as some light leaks. The tweaked result looks like this:

Quite a mild effect, really. Of course, you can also add a frame, out of a staggeringly-rich menu of options:

I went for a 16:9 white rounded frame, and the end result looks like this:

Saving Presets

After you’ve tweaked all the options to death, you might want to save them as a specific preset. If course, Vignette always saves the last values you used, but given the app’s breadth of options you may not want to limit it to just one type of photos. So let’s just save this set of options with a descriptive name:

In the future, I could easily pick out this specific combination (effect and frame) out of the list of favorites:

And what’s even cooler is that Vignette lets me create shortcuts for specific setting combinations right on my homescreen:

So instead of using three different apps (one for HDR, one for “normal” photos and one for Retro-style, say) I could just create three shortcuts to the same app, with different settings.

Bottom Line

Vignette is a powerful, capable, no-nonsense camera app. Its biggest drawback is the lack of a live preview feature for the effect interface. Other than that, it makes for a very solid choice. Stay tuned for more quality camera reviews – and feel free to recommend some of your own in the comments, of course.

Form Healthy Habits & Get Rid of Bad Ones With Success Log & Fail Log [Android 2.1+]

Erez Zukerman — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 22:31:00 +0000

Developing good habits and breaking bad habits can be tricky. Some people like to track their failures and try to see what causes them to slip up, such as “why did I have to binge last night?” Others like to decide on positive habits and track those, to develop a winning mindset and focus on the positive.

Today we’ll be looking at two applications, one for each approach. Fail Log tries to help you break bad habits, while Success Log aims at developing new, healthy ones. Both apps have a virtually identical interface, except for the color and the labels. I decided to keep this review positive and focus on Success Log for most of my screenshots.

Here’s what it looks like:

When you first start the app, a fairly lengthy introduction shows up. Take a moment and read it. With apps like this, half of the work is understanding the system and using the app correctly. Next, the app invites (or rather, orders) you to make a habit you could log:

Note the stress is on positive accomplishments. One of my own bad habits is biting my fingernails; this is not something I can work to solve with Success Log. So let’s go for something positive:

Sounds good! Everybody agrees it’s important to stay hydrated. Note how I worded the habit in past tense – I will be logging it once I’ve done it. After adding this new habit, my list now looks like this:

Lots of room for other habits I could track, too. A short tap on the habit immediately exits the app and pops up a Toaster message:

The idea is to make it easy for you to track your successes by popping into the app, single-tapping an entry, and moving on with life. An elegant workflow, and as you can see on my homescreen, there’s also a widget showing your “Success Count” at a glance. To log a new success, simply tap the widget and the app will launch. Tap whatever task you just succeeded in, and you find yourself back in the homescreen, with another success marked on the counter.

Okay, so you can count your successes. Actually, that alone may lead to developing some good habits. But Success Log goes further by letting you plot your habits on a “heat map”. I just started using the app, so my heat map is nearly empty. You can still read the explanation text to understand how it works, though:

Here’s what a fuller heatmap looks like, from Fail Log’s screenshots on the Market:

The heatmap may be interesting, but it’s not very easy to read. That’s why you can scroll down and read a more detailed analysis of your behavior, broken down by days:

And by time of day:

So (taking the Fail Log example), I may find out I tend to bite my nails quite a bit on Tuesday and Wednesday, around the afternoon. I can then take a moment and think about my routine to figure out what I normally do on those times. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing that particular activity, or maybe I should change something in the way I do it so that it’s less stressful for me.

Another view is the Log:

This is simply a list of all logged events, in chronological order. If you’re tracking more than one habit it can come in handy for recognizing patterns – does one habit routinely follow another? You can also use the log for removing incorrect entries, in case you erroneously tapped a habit on the list and it was entered into the log. Simply long-tap the entry and use the pop-up menu that comes up to delete it.

Most smartphone owners have their device with them nearly all the time, so it’s a very handy way to log your successes and failures. But If Success Log or Fail Log don’t sound quite right for you, Amimetic has a number of other self-improvement apps on the market, all presenting different methods and ways to track your success or failure rates in the goals you set for yourself.

What are your tips for forming good habits or breaking bad habits?

How To Use Mind-Mapping Software To Organize Your New Year Resolutions

Jessica Cam Wong — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 18:31:06 +0000

If you’re looking to create (or revise) your New Year resolutions, you might want to peek at mind-mapping software to organize a master plan or outline to house the steps you’ll take to follow through with each resolution. If you have an idea of what resolutions you want to keep in the upcoming year, a good idea might be to set up a system to facilitate getting those goals completed.

Even if you’re jotting down ideas on a napkin or piece of paper, you should know that mind-mapping software can ensure that you won’t get that napkin lost, you can keep an image of the whole outline as your desktop wallpaper, you can move items around cleanly, etc.

There are many mind-mapping solutions online, such as the ones we profiled here. We’ll be using Bubbl.us, a web-based mind-mapper, to create our outline or plan since it’s very easy to use and has got the basic tools we need.

Break Goals Down Into Tasks

Let’s say your goal is to become a more seasoned cook because you can save money and/or simply because your cooking skills truly stink. You can break your goal down to several tasks that might come hand in hand with cooking more, such as:

remembering to go grocery shopping every so often.
eating out less often.
keeping a weekly menu, etc.

We’ll create different bubbles in an outline on Bubbl.us. You can click on Start Brainstorming button on the site to use the demo (or you can sign up if you want to keep a version of this map online for later retrieval).

You’ll want to type your individual subtasks under each goal by pressing Enter for a new sub-item, and Tab for an item of the same level (sibling bubble).

List Resolutions With Monthly/Weekly Goals

Now in order to keep up with the subtasks, you’ll want to set them up in time frames accordingly. Do you want to make sure you keep up with them on a weekly basis or monthly basis? Depending on your answer, you’ll want to schedule items for each day, week, month, or another interval (e.g. every 3 months).

To adjust your mind map, move the sub-items around, under the main goals, and create child bubbles for time-related entries.

Visualize & Transfer To Task Manager/Calendar

Since now you can view your outline in its full glory with all of the sub-items, you can save your sheet as a picture by clicking on Menu on the bottom right corner.

You’ll then get the options of saving your sheet as a PNG or JPG image, which comes out nicer-looking than the way it looks on the website.

If you use a web-based or desktop task manager or calendar, you can also input your items according to the time frames you designated for each subtask.

Depending on your task manager or calendar software (most apply), you might be able to save yourself from inputting repeated items by using the “repeat every:” feature.

Overall, this is a very simplified way to organize your New Year resolutions and plan ahead. I know I have several things I’d like to accomplish next year, but haven’t yet implemented a system to make sure I can follow up with my wishes so I’ll do this for sure.

Do you have any other ideas for mind-mapping software? How do you keep up with your New Year resolutions (if you have any)?

How To Use Google Calendar & The Event Flair Labs Feature To Track Your New Year’s Resolutions

Jessica Cam Wong — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 23:30:38 +0000

New Year is fast approaching and you might or might not be considering to make or revise your list of resolutions. I’ve been thinking about setting up something to better track my goals while still having everything digitized so I don’t have to deal with disorganized-looking, easily-lost lists with scratched items.

Joe’s Goals and Joe’s Logbook are two really great productivity apps that combine journaling and goal-tracking in a very easy-to-use interface, which inspired me to write this post. Of course, as dedicated logbooks, Joe’s free tools will outshine my simple method, and will definitely help you if you want systems that just work without much setup. If, however, you’re an avid Google Calendar user, check out the following guide to log your goals’ progress in your favorite calendar application.

Create A New Calendar & Name Them With Numbers To Arrange By Priority

Think about the five or three main goals that you want to accomplish in 2011. For each of those, you’ll have to create a new calendar by clicking Add in the main calendar box on the left.

Remember to precede the name of the calendar with a number to see the calendars (and events) ordered by priority.

If there are items tucked away in, say your “Someday” list, now you will have all the reason to follow through with them since they will be visible in your calendar. There are also other advantages to creating new calendars for each goal to track. First, you’ll get color-coded events for easier visualization since Google doesn’t offer customizable color options for individual events. Second, if you want to only look at the progress of one goal, you can easily only display that calendar and hide the others temporarily. And of course, you’ll get see these goals separately from your main calendar so you won’t see a mix of to-do’s and events. If you use an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can even see and sync the color-coded calendars as detailed by Lifehacker by checking the appropriate calendars in this page.

Add Items & Log Progress With Event Flair Or Unicode Symbols

If you don’t want to remember any Unicode numbers, the Event Flair feature will probably best work for you. Go up to Settings > Calendar settings and click on the Labs tab. Find Event Flair, enable this feature and press on Save.

Click on today’s date on the calendar to add an event and just log what you did for a specific goal. If you want the item to be highlighted, you can leave it as an all-day event.

Otherwise, you can simply choose a start and end time for the item, preferably in a time that you don’t ever schedule anything (like 11:59pm) so it won’t come in conflict with your actual events in the main calendar.

To make use of the Event Flair feature, select any calendar entry and the Event Flair gadget window on the right sidebar will display the name of the selected entry. Now, just pick an icon to represent whether the entry is a step forward or backward in your goal path.

After a few seconds, your entry should have the icon.

A disadvantage when using Event Flair is that the icon is only visible when you go to the website on your computer browser; if you sync your calendar to your iOS device, for example, the icons won’t show up. That’s why using Unicode symbols work. You might need to go to your Start Menu in Windows and type Character Map to find the desired symbols. You can also consult this list from Wikipedia. The ones I’m using are called “heavy check mark” (âœ” from U+2714) and “heavy ballot x” (âœ˜ from U+2718), which are thicker than other symbols and are more visible. You can either copy and paste them, or remember the Unicode numbers. To invoke them in Ubuntu, check this handy guide.

As mentioned before, you can see the items with their respective symbols in an iOS device.

After you update your progress everyday on your monthly calendar view (or custom 2- or 3-week view), the fruits of your fun logging will look something like this (note that other calendars are hidden).

What Doesn’t Work In This Setup

You basically will have a hard time adding items in your calendars via text message because you can only send items to your main calendar (not to specific calendars). If you’re using a smartphone app, like the built-in Calendar in iOS, you can input items but for the symbols, you’ll have to use copy and paste, which can be tedious if done on a regular basis.

There are also many more features in Joe’s Goals and Logbook, so you might actually not want to do my method here. Joe’s Logbook, for example, will let you create logbooks for separate things, so you don’t have to cramp everything in your calendar, if it’s already heavy.

There’s also no way to graph your progress for things you spent more time on. If you set starting and ending times for your entries, you might want to look into Youcalc’s Time and Activity Report app for GCal as it can produce some neat-looking charts.

Overall, this could be a fun way to log your progress with certain goals or New Year resolutions. Now, whether you want to give yourself three months or a whole year to accomplish your specific goals, that’s up to you, but at least, you can use a service that you’re already frequenting to keep track of them.

Here are other services that might help you track your life in a fun way. What do you use to log your progress?