Develop good habits with these smartphone apps

Developing good habits takes a lot of work. If it were as easy to develop good habits as bad ones, we'd all be saints. Unfortunately, it's not that easy. That's why we could all use a little help (or at least I can). These smartphone apps are designed to help you create good habits. Keep in mind that you'll only want to work on 1-2 habits at a time. If you try to change too many things at once (like I often do), you'll just set yourself up to fail. Work on your habits for at least three weeks before adding a new one.

Lift: Lift is a free app for iOS. It's very easy to use and even has popular, trending and other categories of habits to choose from automatically. The downside to this app is that you can't create your own habits; you must choose from their lists. There are also some privacy concerns from users whose activity is published to Twitter. I didn't connect my Twitter account to the app, so I'm not sure if there's a way around that or not. Just don't connect your Twitter account to it to be safe.

Habit Streak: This is a free app for Android devices. It is easy to use and allows you to build up several "chains" of habits at once. The app keeps track of how many days in a row that you've been keeping your habit. Each day, you'll get an optional reminder prompting you to record the previous day's activities.

Good Habits: Like Habit Streak, Good Habits for iOS helps you develop "chains" of good habits. No one wants to break a chain, right? You can set daily reminders for each habit and see all your habits in checklist form. In my opinion, the interface is not as user-friendly as Lift, but it's still easy to use. You can also pause your habits. This is a useful feature because if one of your habits is getting up at 6:30 every day, you may want to put that on hold while you're on vacation.

Have you used an app to help you develop good habits?

Photo courtesy QuinnDombrowski via Flickr.