Everyone is aware of the importance of setting goals in order to excel in life and business. But with life’s unpredictability and the complexity of your goals, it can often get difficult to manage your (personal, business, etc.) them.

In such cases, opting for a goal-setting app or two can go a long way in sticking to and achieving your goals. This article details the important role of goal-setting apps in achieving goals, followed by a concise guide on how to select the right goal-setting app for you.

5 Reasons to Use Goal-Setting Apps

Setting specific and attainable goals is an important part of self-improvement, and goal-setting apps can help to make it easier. Here are some reasons why to use them.

1. Tracking Progress to Gain Better Insights

Say you want to run a marathon in a month, and you’ve decided to run 2 miles every day for the whole month. You can use apps like MapMyRun to track your daily progress. Other habit-tracking apps like ToDoist are also great for goal setting. Apart from tracking your runs, you can also take notes on individual runs. You could note:

• How did you feel running the first few days?
• What was your diet throughout the month?
• Did your eating habits affect your runs?
• Did you feel more energetic over the month?

All of these are important questions that provide great insights that you can use to set better goals and achieve more in the future.

2. Collecting and Analyzing Data for Better Goal Setting

Whether you’re working as a solopreneur or running a business trying to meet a goal, data is your best friend. Say you’re a freelancer that’s constantly bidding on new projects while working on the ones that are pending. Having an idea of how many projects you’re bidding on versus how many you actually got per month could help you decide whether your current bidding strategy is even working.

Moreover, information about how much time you’re putting into actual work versus bidding, managing, and other managerial tasks could provide valuable insights into your working habits. A similar case can be made for a business manager or an entrepreneur.

Goal-setting apps like Toodledo and ATracker help you set work/business/personal goals. What’s great about such apps is that they present your data in the form of graphs, charts, and other visual representations that are easy to interpret.

3. Identifying Roadblocks & Making Adjustments

Data is just useless numbers and figures if not acted upon. With the help of the data presented by goal-setting apps, you can identify problems in your systems in real-time. Consider our previous example of a freelancer:

• If the percentage of scoring projects based on daily bidding is less than the required amount, you could try changing your bidding strategy. You could first try changing the structure of the bids and see how that pans out. Narrowing down your potential clients to a more targeted niche could be another approach.
• If the project scoring percentage increases in either (or both) scenarios, that means you’ve identified the problem. You could now put in more effort to improve your strategy to minimize or eradicate the problem.

Goal-setting apps that present data visually allow you to notice trends in your activities. By regularly monitoring and assessing data, you can, thus, improve your productivity and effectiveness by identifying issues and making adjustments to your system for increased efficiency.

4. Getting Accountable

Accountability plays an important role in achieving set goals. You can set up daily task reminders on project management apps such as Asana or ClickUp. These apps send daily email reminders regarding the set tasks for the day, along with their deadlines. Knowing that a particular task/goal is pending provides a sense of accountability and urgency that compels you to get the task done.

A unique app in this regard is stickK. It uses our innate desire of loss aversion, helping us stay accountable for our goals. Users sign a commitment contract with themselves that helps them stick to their goals by putting money on the line.

5. Increasing Motivation With Progress Reports

Goal-setting apps such as Strides provide daily progress reports that act as great motivators for further action. Seeing how far along you’ve come in achieving your goals boosts your morale and motivation.

It's a good idea to set process goals, according to a study on the effects of goal setting on motivation and adherence. The study found that process goals improve motivation and adherence way more than setting outcome goals or no goals at all.

The 4 Best Goal-Setting Apps to Help You Achieve Your Goals

Goal-setting apps can be a great tool to help you set and reach process goals, making it easier to stay motivated and track progress. Here are some of the best ones to use.

1. Toodledo

The Toodledo app offers a simple interface and a long list of features. The app is divided into five sections: Tasks, Notes, Outlines, Habits, and Lists. The Tasks section lets you set tasks, add reminders, prioritize, and sort tasks based on their level of importance.

Toodledo is also great for building new habits and tracking your progress. The Habits section allows you to create new habits and set scheduled reminders to help you with consistency.

Download: Toodledo for Android | iPhone (Free, subscription available)

2. MapMyRun

If your goal is to run a marathon or improve your fitness, MapMyRun is the app for you. The app lets you track and log your workouts. While you can set personal goals and workout routines, if you’re new, you can also find a catalog of great workout routines and running drills to improve your fitness.

The app allows you to add friends to push each other and share your achievements to add accountability and increase your motivation.

Download: MapMyRun for Android | iOS (Free, subscription available)

3. ATracker

Time tracking is a useful habit when it comes to goal setting. When you’re on the clock, it gives you a sense of urgency, and you’re more focused on the task and less likely to get distracted.

ATacker’s minimalist design helps you achieve that. You can start time tracking by tapping on the task, and when you’re done, simply tap again to stop the timer. The app also provides a history of the time you spent on various tasks and generates detailed weekly and monthly reports to give you a better perspective of your time utilization.

Download: ATracker for Android | iOS (Free, premium version available)

4. Todoist

Owing to its amazing set of features, Todoist is more than just a to-do list app. In Todoist, you can create projects with sub-tasks, prioritize, and set up reminders.

The app also lets you add your teammates to your projects for easier collaboration, keeping all project-related information in a single center. You can assign different tasks to different individuals, categorize tasks, and track your progress in the app’s Activity log.

Download: Todoist for Android | iOS | Windows (Free, subscription available)

It’s Time to Set Goals

It’s time to get to choose your goal-setting app and start achieving more to become a better version of yourself. And while you’re at it, remember to set SMART goals.

Since SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevance, and Time) goals are more realistic and specific, you have a better chance of achieving them. While setting goals, try to avoid the critical goal-setting mistakes people usually make, such as setting vague or unrealistic goals.