How to Break Bad Habits With Tech

We all have bad habits. Some are harmless, some are gross, some are downright dangerous. Whether you're a procrastinator, an inconsiderate nail clipper, or just smoke and drink and eat to excess, there are plenty of ways to get help. Therapy, meetings, family, friends—these are all methods you should seriously consider.

Plus, there are Web sites and apps.

Yes, there's an app for "that," almost no matter what "that" might entail, but when it comes to busting your bad, bad habits, don't overlook the possibilities. With some help from software—and by applying some of your own willpower, an aspect that can't be overlooked or ignored—it's possible to better yourself. Even if all you do is correct one practice or pattern that is bugging, governing, or ruining you and those around you on a regular basis.

With some of these tools and tips, you can try positive, go negative (start paying for your habitual crimes!), or a little of both.

No matter what you try—and we suggest a mix—stick with it. It usually takes about 21 days to truly break a habit, and some say 28. But if you can gather the will to stick with the changes (and the apps/services below), you might find a major change.

All Habits Broken

Start at Habitforge, a site that promises to "inspire and encourage you every day" by creating a community to help you. That's right, it's habit-breaking via social networking (going it alone is also an option). Perhaps more importantly, Habitforge sends you a daily email asking how you're doing with betterment. Answer yes or no, it tracks your progress, and once you reach milestones like 21, 30, or 60 days, you'll gt some kudos. All you do is enter your email address to get started.

Similarly, Coach.me (formerly Lift; free for iOS and Android) is all about training you to be the best you. You pick a goal, and the targets to reach the goal, but you can pay a little extra for some personal in-app coaching if the community aspect isn't enough.

Try HabitSeed (Free, iPhone only) if you're the nurturing type. It simply tracks your progress over 21 days of trying to break or create a new habit. If you're successful, the seed you planted at the start matures into a full (albeit virtual) tree.

HabitRPG (free, Web-based) is a bit more involved. It "gamifies" your habits, turning bad things into monsters to vanquish. The more work you do to break the offending practice, the more points and prizes you can score. Again, it makes a quantum leap ahead when you go with the collaborative "gaming," kind of like how Halo is better with a group than in solo-play. It was once a Kickstarter project that was successfully funded.

Breaking Bad Habits

Snooze Alarm Abuse

If you're the type to hit the snooze button multiple times—enough that you end up late for work anyway—there are some technological options to help you get up. Mathe Alarm is a free iOS app (with some Android variations) that won't shut off the alarm until you're awake enough to do some math problems. Enter the answer and you'll get some quiet, but by then, it's probably too late to fall back to sleep.

Other options include Clocky ($39.99, pictured below), an alarm clock with wheels that jumps off your night stand and runs around the room until you (or your dog) catch it, and the SnūzNLūz ($39.99), a Wi-Fi-enabled digital alarm clock that actually donates your money to causes you hate if you don't get out of bed.

Breaking Bad Habits- Clocky

Once you've perfected getting out of bed, perfect what you'll do to start your day with the HabitClock app (free on iOS, Android in the works). It helps create worthwhile morning routines, and provides reports on how well you're managing the changes.

The Mobile Tech Swear Jar

Everyone knows the concept of the swear jar: for every bad word uttered, a quarter, dollar bill, or more goes in the jar. It works for cursing, smoking, drinking—you name it. (Later, it can finance your bail.) But what do you do when you're out and about and not near your glass jar of punishment?

First, you need to have people around you keeping you honest, so be sure to put it out there on social media, and at the office water cooler, that if you're caught red handed, you want people to let you know. But setting up the burden of payment while mobile is key.

If you're on Twitter, and you use that platform to mouth off with bad words and regret it, link your account to SwearJar.cc. It'll donate cash (£1, or about $1.49 USD) to famine relief when you do. There are also several app options, including the free Vice Jar for iOS (below).

Breaking Bad Habits- Vice Jar

Or, build your own jar. Enlist IFTTT. The excellent "if this, then that" service that merges Web-based services can help you at least track the bad words. Download IFTTT's DO button apps for iOS and Android—they provide one-click instant results. With that one click, you can build, for example, a shared spreadsheet in Google Sheets that would track your mouth, or send a notifying email to your spouse, or even make a Facebook status update outing you. As long as you're honest.

Write it Down and Watch It

If there's anything that dieters know, losing weight is actually a lot easier when you know what you're eating. So keeping a written record of what you ingest is a must. Apps like MyFitnessPal and LoseIt! make this a breeze. Relaxation coach Andrew Johnson has a whole suite of apps for iOS and Android that help with weight loss, stopping smoking and drinking, even dealing with social phobias and tech addiction. There's really no end to the apps that can help.

Don't forget, you live in an age with cameras attached to everything. Use that video, not to surveil yourself (but it would be nice if your Dropcam sent alerts whenever you sipped a beer or bit your nails). Instead, use video to create a visual journal. It can be for an early morning pep-talk ("Hey, today's the day: no more cupcakes!") or a late-night post mortem ("well...at least I ate fewer cupcakes.") There's also that option of making some embarrassing video that you or someone you trust will toss out to social media when you backslide. Perhaps the threat of that super-cut of your private pole dancing practice going public will curtail your cravings.

Get Active with Apps

Sometimes the best way to break a bad habit is to develop a new, better habit. You need to download an app that will push you to new limits while you're not doing something you really want. Consider a fitness app. There's plenty of Couch to 5K apps out there, but geeks will appreciate Zombies, Run! ($3.99, iOS and Android) the most. It turns exercise into a game, as you hear the hordes of undead on your heels, and you have to stay ahead of them.

There are also plenty of 7-minute workout challenge apps—the kind that make it clear that anyone can do 7 minutes of work per day. But it's also 7 minutes you'd probably like to avoid. There's another geek-tastic option for this: the Superhero Workout ($2.99, iOS and Android). Yeah, yeah, it's essentially the same exact thing, but you get a little more out of it: your device camera tracks your movements so you can't cheat and you get missions to accomplish. Plus, it's just nicer to know your efforts lead, eventually, to wearing a cape.

Breaking Bad Habits - supeheroworkout

If you already belong to a gym and your bad habit is that you just don't go, download Pact (free, iOS and Android). Every time you miss a session or eat too much, the app makes a donation on your behalf—sometimes to other users of the app who did what they were supposed to.

Manage Your Time

Feel as if your worst habit is being scattered? How do you better focus your ability to get things done?

Breaking Bad Habits - PomodoroConsider the Pomodoro technique, created in the 1980s. It's simple: work for 25 minutes on a single task, take a five minute break. After three or four sessions, take a full 15-minute break. Do it all day long, and you'll get plenty done, plus plenty of breaks.

The basic tool of Pomodoro is, naturally, a timer (it's named for the timers that looked like tomatoes). But there are many options beyond a kitchen timer (though that's a perfect option). Load up Tomato.es in the browser and you've got a Web-based timer. There's even a Chrome extension. For iOS try Pomodoro Timer ($1.99) or Focus Time ($4.99); Android users have Simple Pomodoro and ClearFocus (both free).

Recover What's Lost

If your habit of badness is that you just don't know where you put anything, ever, modern wireless tech is here to help. Small Bluetooth-based wireless tags are everywhere these days, and you can buy a few to put on your keys, in your purse, even on the back of your electronics, so you never have to go without them again. Most of them then use your phone or tablet to help you locate the lost items. They'll even alert you if you get too far away from the tagged item.

Among the products you can try: Chipolo (above, $30 per chip; up to $199.95 for 9 of them); Kensington Proximo ($24.99 tags); PebbleBee ($24.99 up to 6 for $124.95); Protag Duet ($29.99) and Protag Elite ($79.99 card for the wallet); and there are many more.

This is just the start of the many apps and services out there designed to help you make changes. Do searches in the iTunes App Store or Google Play and other app stores to find just the right digital tools to help you. You'll probably find exactly what you, and your habit, are looking for.