I admit it. I suck at moderation. If one slice of pizza is good, then wolfing down an entire pie in one sitting is great. No point in constraining myself to a single episode of a good TV show when Netflix lets me plow through an entire season while munching my way through a bag of Cheetos on the couch until the sun comes up.
It come as no surprise that I’ve developed quite a few bad habits over the years, which leads me to another problem: I have a terrible time staying motivated when it comes to bettering myself. Sure, I want to get in shape, but watching TV sounds a whole lot better than going to the gym and when the waiter asks for my order my brain goes all caveman and forgets about that salad I’d intended to order in favor of the 20 oz. steak covered in potato chips and cheese with a slathering of mayonnaise to hold it all together. When it comes to self improvement, I am my own worst enemy.
There Are A Thousand Apps For That
There are a number of good apps in the App Store for keeping track of the habits you want to make or break. I’ve tried a many of them over the years, never stuck with any of them for more than a week or two. Though they take various approaches, the focus of all of the apps I’ve tried centers around the number of days I had succeeded in staying the course with the habits I wanted to make and break. This is great if you’re motivated by quantitative success (example: you’ve gone 30 days without smoking and want to see if you can make it to 60). Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people. For me, numbers alone are not enough.
Introducing My Reasons
In the downtime between the last Home Inventory release and ramping up for the next one, I decided to take a stab at building a different type of habit app that puts the focus on the reasons behind the habits you want to make or break. The result is My Reasons.
You add photos and text for each habit that depict and describe your reasons for wanting to make or break that habit. When you launch the app, it displays these reasons in an elegant animation that reminds you why you want to better yourself and helps inspire you to stay the course. For example: I want to get in better shape by working out every weekday, so I’ve added photos of my wife and son, as well as myself when I occupied less space on the couch, along with some descriptions of why this is important to me, such as, “So I can keep up with my son.”, who is full of boundless energy and always wants to play.
You can set the days of the week and timeframe your reasons for each habit appear and yes, My Reasons does allow you to keep track of your progress. The numbers are there if you want them and you can mark your successes each day and see how you’ve been doing.
My Reasons also has a Today View extension so you can easily get inspiration from anywhere on your iPhone or iPad by swiping down from the top of the screen to bring up the Today View. And when the Apple Watch makes its debut on April 24th, you’ll be able to see your reasons there as well, because My Reasons also includes an Apple Watch app.
If you have trouble staying motivated when trying to better yourself like I do, I hope you will give My Reasons a try. It’s available for free on the App Store with support for up to two habits and three photos and three text reasons per habit. Unlimited habits, photos, and text reasons are available for a small, one-time in-app purchase. You can also find out more about My Reasons on the My Reasons website.
