Having written for Provoke Lifestyle for a few years now has me reflecting on previous January columns. My goal is always to touch on the usual New Year themes such as resolutions, goals, self-help, and lifestyle improvements, but to explore a different angle, since trite New Year’s content is plentiful at this time! I’ve written about choosing more spiritual resolutions, and about measuring progress as “more of this, less of that” rather than a binary “pass/fail” approach. This year I feel compelled to embrace technology and show you readers how certain apps can help you stick with your new year resolutions.

On the topic of past columns I’ve written, I’ve certainly explored and perhaps emphasized some of the negative aspects of today’s technology, mainly social media. But I also believe that technology is a great gift, and can really help us level-up our life if we use it correctly. Recently some interactions with my children’s classmates’ moms revealed that many women here, in particular, do not keep up with computer skills or digital literacy if they are not in school or working. They hand the baton over to their kids, throwing up their hands and saying “I am so bad with technology”. To such women, I say to you now, “Ladies, never stop learning!” Not only are basic computer skills necessary to being an active and productive member of society, but embracing them and learning more can bring about meaningful improvements to your life!

Let’s take for example a hypothetical woman whose period woes keep disrupting her life. With smartphones replacing pen and paper, most women don’t maintain diaries or calendars, so tracking her period becomes a matter of memory and mental math. Her expensive holidays get spoiled when Aunt Flo unexpectedly arrives. She has to cancel plans that she initiated, because her cramps are too painful. She wonders why she feels so low and miserable, only to understand later that it was PMS. A woman like this is unable to plan her life according to her hormonal health, and this can lead to much angst, although to the uninformed it may sound dramatic to let your menstrual cycle affect your life so much. Well, for some people, this is their truth, and such women could get a new lease on life simply by using an app like Flo, Clue, or 28Wellness to track their cycles. How do these apps work? As you log your menstrual cycle dates plus any other symptoms throughout the month, the app learns about your cycle, and can offer predictions, suggestions, and relevant information about what hormonal phase you are in. The longer you use the app while regularly entering in your data, the more accurate it becomes, and you can consult it before planning holidays or other major events, or check it to understand why you are experiencing certain symptoms. Synchronising your life to your cycle could be exactly what you need, and these apps make it possible.

As much as I try to avoid the most over-discussed new year topics, we cannot get away from the fact that exercising more or improving physical fitness is one of the most common resolutions. If joining a gym in January hasn’t proved to work for you in the past, how about trying a fitness app instead? Many people find it much easier to exercise consistently when they don’t have to leave their house to do it, and fitness apps bring a world of movement opportunities to your fingertips. Cult.fit, Nike Training Club, Fittr, and 7 Minute Workout are all excellent fitness apps available in India. From personalised training programs to equipment-free workouts, these apps offer great content, especially for paid subscribers. A busy mother would probably find it much easier to do an at-home workout, while the kids are in school, saving time and energy on commuting to a gym or class. It would be a shame for women to not take advantage of this option because of an aversion to tech. Both men and women, anyone who hasn’t found consistency with gyms or classes should consider using a fitness app to track progress and stay motivated.

And of course, what goes hand in hand with exercise goals? Diet goals. In India, the festive season kicks off with Deepavali, lasts all through Christmas, and concludes with New Year’s Eve. By January, everyone is maxed out on sugar and booze, and is excited to eat “clean”. If you want to use an app to help you stay on track with your food habit goals, try researching according to your needs. Do you prefer to track calories, or macros? Do you need recipe ideas or is seamless integration with your Apple watch more important? Your research should pull up apps like HealthifyMe, MyFitnessPal, and Lifesum. The good news is that almost all apps will offer a trial period of at least 7 days, so you can give each one a go before deciding which subscription to purchase. These days, our phone never remains far from our hands. Why not harness its power as an accountability tool by using apps to track your progress? If you keep that app’s notifications on, your phone will regularly remind you about your goals and what you’re supposed to be doing. Of course, it is up to you to put in the work – not even the most advanced technology (like Elon’s creepy new robots) can replace the agency required in self-improvement!

Reducing stress and prioritizing mental health is another common New Year’s resolution. If there is one thing that experts across all fields agree on, it is the benefits of meditation. Neurologists and spiritualists alike preach that meditation reduces stress and calms the nervous system; a must in today’s rushed, over-stimulated world. However, it can be really difficult to stay consistent with meditating daily–adopting any new regular habit as an adult is challenging. An app could be the perfect tool to keep you consistent by showing you your daily streak, eliciting your natural, gamified response to not break it. You can set the notification to prompt you at the same time every day, and remember, there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to incorporating healthy habits. Perhaps you think meditation can only be done in the morning, and since you are not a morning person and have too much to do from the moment you wake up, you’ve given up trying. But meditation can be done at any time of day, as can exercise, journaling, or any other self-improvement practice. The beauty of apps is that you can tailor the settings to suit you, giving yourself a better chance of success. Two of the most popular meditation apps are Calm and Headspace, but my husband has had the most success with Waking Up by Sam Harris. Again, make diligent use of those free trial periods, and purchase the one which feels most natural and pleasurable for you to use.

One resolution that I wish more people would have is to be more organised. I feel that having access to all information, all the time, has made people lazy, and no one notes down important information anymore. During the pandemic, in those dismal days of online school, our teachers would hold the occasional online meeting for parents. I became known as the only parent who would take down notes of what was said during the meeting. But if you are a parent and/or responsible for running a household, you should be the kind of person that writes things down! And since pen and paper are practically antiquated artefacts at this point, it’s time you learned how to use your phone to stay organized and on top of your life. If you have an iPhone, your Notes app plus Calendar and maybe Reminders are all you need. If you have a tech-averse mother in your life, please teach her how to set recurring events with reminder notifications in Calendar for her kids’ classes and consider it a good deed. We all know that women carry most of the mental load of their families, being responsible for remembering a deluge of information from dates and timings to medicine doses and food allergies. What all these women need to do is to use their phone as a second brain, automating as much as possible so that the phone relieves some of the mental load. If your phone’s inbuilt apps don’t do the trick for you, try apps like Todoist or Notion. Entrepreneurs, industry leaders, tech-bros and high-achievers in general are all obsessed with productivity and organization, producing much content on the topic. So there is a wealth of resources available to anyone who wants to improve in this capacity. If you know someone who is forgetful and always a beat behind, ask them to try one of these apps, and go the extra mile to help them learn it if they need the assistance.

As you can see, there are multiple apps to choose from every category of self-improvement. If you’re ready to put in the work, they may give you the edge you need to achieve all your dreams for 2025. Wishing you a tech-savvy and successful year ahead, dear readers!