4 great goal setting apps for agents

Do you ever find that you enter a fresh year at work full of hope, motivation and excitement, only to realise you didn’t achieve what you set out to the previous year?

If this sounds all too familiar we’ve found some of the best goal setting and tracking apps to enlist the support of when setting your professional goals and resolutions for 2017.

Smartphone apps are often the best way to set and track career related goals because you have access to them on the go and you can constantly review and adjust them as required.

These handy apps will help make sure your goals have the best chance of being managed, followed through on and accomplished come 2018.

Google Calendar

The good thing about this tool is that you’re probably already familiar with how to use it from using Gmail’s calendar and the smartphone app. Google Calendar’s new goals feature is a great way to manage both professional and personal resolutions.

It allows you to set different types of goals you may want to accomplish including exercise, new skills, friends and family time, me time and organisation. Best of all, you can plan and dedicate time every week, day or month to achieve your short and long term goals. When you set a goal, you select how often you need to work on it, for how long and when, and get smart notifications (before and after your session) to help you prepare and track your progress.

GoalsonTrack

If you struggle to achieve your broader goals because of procrastination or you often don’t know where to start, GoalsOnTrack could be the right app for you. This robust app helps you break down larger goals into smaller easily-achievable sub-goals using SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely) goal-setting criteria.

To keep your goals on course and organised you can add in different categories, create action plans, schedule deadlines, make notes in the built-in goal journal and even add motivational images. You can track your progress in real time which is great for staying motivated whenever you complete a sub-goal on the road towards your long-term goals.

irunurun

If you’re looking for something a bit out of the ordinary and fun, this app ‘gamifies’ building new habits, goal setting and the achievement process. It’s more geared towards the day-to-day and weekly tasks you need to do to work towards larger goals.

You start by adding an action or habit you need to track and assigning it a point value out of 100. Once you’ve entered all the actions you want to track for the next week the game begins. You have zero points at the start of the week and then work through your actions to gain points every day. If you complete each action at the scheduled time you would get a perfect score of 100 points at the end of the week.

If you want a bit of friendly competition, encouragement or accountability, you can invite family, friends or colleagues to any action you create. There are three versions of the app- personal, team and enterprise- so why not get your whole office on board!

stickK

If you really have a lot of trouble sticking to your goals, why not introduce an extra financial incentive to push yourself across the line this year? Enter stickK. The app was developed by Yale University behavioural economists and is based on motivating people to achieve a goal or it will cost them real money. Stickk says ‘you’re up to 3X more likely to achieve a goal if you put money on the line’.

The app uses a ‘commitment contract’ to bind you to your goal. You choose your goal, when you need to achieve it by, how much money is on the line and where you want the money to go should you fail (e.g. to a friend, charity or family member). For accountability, you can choose a referee to monitor your progress or you can go it alone. So bet on yourself this year and use stickK to up your motivation and accomplish your most critical goals.

We hope these apps allow you to become more productive, fulfil your goals and grow your business this year and beyond. For advice on setting attainable goals check out our tips for setting SMART professional goals.