Unless you are born with an iron will, setting goals may be a tough task. When you are trying to keep your work-study-life balance, each new task can cause a butterfly effect shattering all your plans for a month. The goal-tracking apps may come in handy if you have experienced something similar before. Goal trackers won’t create more free time for you, but they can do something else.
Firstly, they structure and help you automate your offline daily routine, in a similar way as various social media tools and schedulers do, thus saving your time. You may set alarms for your repeated actions once and for all, connect your goal tracker with your other apps, never forget to take your medicine, eat in time, stay hydrated, or do your exercises. Secondly, goal trackers allow you not to keep in mind all the dozens of tasks you have. Imagine how much free memory and how less stress you’ll have knowing that you have a digital friend who reminds you about everything important! Thirdly, goal trackers can encourage you and help you stay motivated on the way to your dream. Many apps offer achievements, competitions, and other exciting things that may entertain you while completing your goals. Some of them are even gamified, turning your experience into an adventure.
Let’s see what goal trackers are the best for students in 2021!
1. Strides
The Strides app is one of the best goal-setting apps this year. It has an intuitive interface that you can instantly understand. It is also very flexible, allowing you to track everything: short-term goals, epic plans, or daily habits. The Strides app uses the SMART method - an acronym meaning Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely. The goals can be set at any time, and a big one can be divided into several milestones.
The Strides app’s flexibility makes it one of the best goal-setting apps, but, unfortunately, now it is available for iOS only.
2. Habitica
Habitica is more of a habit-setting app, but it takes second place because of its gamification potential. Habitica looks like a classical RPG, with EXP points, levels, armor, weapons, and quests. To fight the boss, you need to keep being committed to your goals for some days (from 7 to 30). Another great trait of Habitica is the possibility to create “parties” and fight “raid bosses”, creating communities, setting and completing goals together. The friendly community is one of the best parts of this app, after the gamification itself.
3. Way of Life
The Way of Life app is the best variant for diagrams and progress bars lovers. You won’t find lots of figures there: all your progress is visualized. The innovation of this app deals with goals and good habits and the elimination of the bad ones, too. So you may list everything you want to get rid of and see it diminishing in bright infographics! The Way of Life app also supports daily reminders of different types, so you’ll never mix up your work, study, and personal goals. The app also works as a daily checklist, so keep in mind that you’ll need some minutes at the end of the day to write down your progress.
This beautiful tracker’s only drawback is that the free version allows you to track three goals only. If you feel that it is really what you need - think about purchasing the full version.
4. GoalsOnTrack
Another goal-tracking app that uses SMART solution. GoalsOnTrack has a web version for laptops and is supported by all the major smartphone operating systems. The great benefit of this app is that it allows offline tracking. It will be a convenient addition for the people who turn their phones into flight mode for extra productivity. The preset templates make the goal-setting process even more accessible.
Unlike the previous apps, GoalOnTrack doesn’t have any free versions, so you have to decide if you want it at once.
5. Coach.me
Coach.me offers the same services that GoalsOnTrack has, but with benefits of Habitica-class community and personalized coaching. You may use it just like an average free goal tracker on your smartphone, pay a small sum to get access to the community motivation, success stories, ask questions to the coaches, or even have a tailor-made goal-setting plan created just for you.
6. ATracker
ATracker is excellent because it combines the standard goal-tracking app functions with a fully functioning task manager. It can measure the time you spend on each task and then analyze your day’s effectiveness, showing how much you worked and how much free time you have. You may track any activities, from studying to playing games to sleeping or simply procrastinating. It requires a lot of clicking to use because you have to mark each activity’s start and stop, but if you want a detailed report, ATracker is the best app you can find!
The free version is available for everyone, but the quantity of tasks you may track is limited.
When we are students, we may think that our bodies and minds can handle any load. We can party hard, do our assignments, do some work, sleep a few hours and start afresh. It isn’t the healthiest way of living. It’s very reasonable to start tracking your habits until your daily routine gathers too many tasks to be remembered. A goal-setting app may become your perfect helper in any of your plans!
