.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT SHOOTOUT
.TITLE Great software to help you manage your New Year’s resolutions
.AUTHOR Heather Wardell
.SUMMARY It’s here again: New Year’s resolution time! Writing out your goals and setting out the steps that lead to achieving those goals improves your chances of actually meeting your goals. Having your goals in your Palm, always accessible, should make your success nearly certain. There are many goal-setting and planning programs available, and Contributing Editor Heather Wardell tested five of them in this article. What’s the right choice for you? You’ll have to read Heather’s article to find out.
.FEATURE
It’s here again: New Year’s resolution time! Writing out your goals and setting out the steps that lead to achieving those goals improves your chances of actually meeting your goals. Having your goals in your Palm, always accessible, should make your success nearly certain.
There are many goal-setting and planning programs available, and I’ve tested five of them in this article. At the end, I will summarize how to decide which program will be the best for you.
.H1 Projects
As the name implies, Projects is project management software. What are goals, though, but projects? Projects is clear and intuitive, and freeware to boot, so it’s a great place to start. Projects is Free Software provided under the terms of GNU General Public License (GPL).
Figure A shows the project entry screen. As you can see, it’s plain, but still effective. You enter the start date, and either the end date or the number of days for the project. Set a state for the project (for example, whether the project is active or not) and assign it to a category. The ToDo tab allows you to enter the steps to reach your goal. The entry dialog is very similar to the standard Palm ToDo entry form, which makes it easy to use.
.FIGPAIR A Projects has clear and well-designed screens.
There is also an overview screen, which shows you all the projects you have. You can also see all ToDo items on this screen if you choose.
.BREAK_EMAIL Make sure you achieve all your goals. Tap here to read the rest of this story.
Projects doesn’t give any guidance on how best to break down your goals, nor does it have any focus on roles and values. It’s not meant to, though. This is a program for the pure management of projects, and it fulfils this particular role very nicely. And you can’t beat the price! We give Projects a 3 out of 5.
.RATING 3
.H1 Goal For It
If you need a little guidance, Goal For It walks you through the process of creating a goal. When you press the Create New Goal button, you see the screen below. As you can see, the screen is clear and easy to read.
.FIGPAIR B Goal For It’s goal creation screen is full without being cluttered.
All of the information about your goal is entered through this screen. List the reasons why you want to reach the goal, the steps to complete, and encouraging quotes to keep you motivated. You can also set reminders with alarms which bring you into Goal For It.
Goal For It comes with fifty inspirational quotes, and you can edit or delete these and add your own. There is also a journal and a free-hand drawing field. This, unfortunately, does not work on my Zire 72, as I get strange jagged lines. Other applications with the same drawing field also don’t work; I suspect my Zire is the cause.
As Figure C shows, Goal For It keeps a consistent look and feel throughout, so it is always clear how to proceed. There is also help available from nearly every screen, very nice for those of us who don’t read manuals.
.FIGPAIR C Goal For It keeps the same navigation bar at the bottom of all screens.
There are some oddities in the program, however. You can mark a goal as "in progress" or "complete", but this information doesn’t seem to do anything. There is space for only twelve steps for each goal; if yours is more complicated, you might need to break it into multiple goals. As well, you can check off the steps as you complete them, but the program doesn’t record completion dates.
Overall, Goal For It is one of the simpler programs that I tested, and also one of the most effective and, at $13.95, reasonably priced. We give Goal For It a 3 out of 5.
.RATING 3
[There may be some problems with Goal For It, however. As of the time this review was published, the author’s Web page, listed as being at www.adlsoftware.homestead.com was shown as disabled. The downloaded trial instructs registration at that address, which means you may not be able to turn Goal For It from a trial shareware release into a fully functional partner in achieving your goals. — Ed.]
.BEGIN_KEEP
.H1 GoalKeeper
I thought GoalKeeper would be an option for someone who needs more guidance than Goal For It provides, or for someone who is a Franklin Covey devotee. This is not the case, as the software has some serious flaws.
When you first enter GoalKeeper, you are taken to the Mission Statement screen. Unfortunately, the program doesn’t give any guidance as to what to include in a mission statement. There is an "i" icon, which I expected to provide help; it leads to a blank screen.
The only way to progress through the application seems to be through the "i" icon. You enter your values, your roles in life, your goals and the tasks associated with the goals (all tasks appear together on one screen). The next section is "Goal Evaluation". It’s not clear what this is intended to be; there is a section for "Positive" and "Negative", and a check box labeled "Always".
GoalKeeper has potential, but it feels like an early test version, not a finished application. There are partial characters appearing in fields. The Web site address (at http://www.handekeeper.com) listed in the "About" menu is now a search portal, which does not bode well for the future of this application. More expensive than Goal For It but not nearly as well designed, GoalKeeper, shown in Figure D, is not recommended.
.FIGPAIR D GoalKeeper’s screens have some flaws.
We give GoalKeeper a record low 1 out of 5.
.RATING 1
.END_KEEP
.H1 Quest Booster
Quest Booster has a similar approach to GoalKeeper, but is a solid application. It guides you through defining your goals, but does not force you to follow its process. Figure E shows the overview screen. Everything is accessible from this screen, and the screen itself is always available through the home icon at the top.
.FIGPAIR E Quest Booster’s overview screen is clear and easy to use.
The first step, Beliefs, is interesting. The software asks you to list a belief of yours that makes it less likely that you will achieve your goal (such as "I don’t have the willpower to lose weight"). You must then list reasons why this belief is false, perhaps citing your excellent track record at work in completing projects. Next, the software helps you assess the costs of this erroneous belief, and then you create a replacement belief. There is room to go through this cycle three times.
Under the Goals section, you enter your goal, and the steps that will lead to it, under one of nine different categories. You can enter both your overall goals and your goals for the next year. This is a nice feature that allows you to keep a list of all of your future goals without having them in the way of your current ones.
Finally, you enter the actions that you need to complete, and their due dates, as shown in Figure F.
.FIGPAIR F Quest Booster keeps a list of your required actions.
All actions for a given day appear in the Actions screen. These tasks do not appear in the Palm date book, but they are all neatly consolidated in Quest Booster. We give Quest Booster a 3 out of 5.
.RATING 3
.H1 Target Assistant Pro
If you are basically looking for a full-time life coach, Target Assistant Pro (or Target Assistant, which has the same functionality but for only one goal at a time) is the one for you. The software does everything but actually complete the tasks for you.
When you start the program for the first time, it gives you a list of four sample targets. I used the "Lose Weight" template as a basis for setting up my goal. Target Assistant Pro gives suggested actions for achieving this goal.
Once the goal was activated, the software asked for my target weight and the date by which I wanted to reach this goal. The arrow icon at the bottom of the screen allows you to enter the actions that will take you to your goal. I chose to change a few of the suggestions, but I feel that the software provided a solid basis for a weight loss plan, as shown in Figure G.
.FIGPAIR G Target Assistant Pro guides you in creating your goal’s actions.
Target Assistant Pro can alert you twice a day to focus on your goals. The software has a database of encouraging quotations, which it presents as part of its alert process. As well, it can announce that you have reached a certain percentage of completion and tell you that it’s time for a reward.
I do find Target Assistant Pro’s user interface a bit lacking. Many fields that resemble text entry fields are actually drop-down menus, which is confusing. If you begin to create a new goal and then decide to cancel out, pressing the Delete button at the bottom of the screen results in a message that you must create at least one action for a new goal. To cancel out of goal creation, you must instead press the small red X at the top of the screen. These flaws, though, are small when compared to the vast amount of functionality that Target Assistant Pro provides.
While the software is solidly designed and very functional, at $39.95, I do feel that it is overpriced considering that there is no desktop version. Even so, we give Target Assistant Pro a 4 out of 5.
.RATING 4
.H1 Recommendations
As mentioned above, GoalKeeper is not functional, and is therefore not recommended.
If you are looking for a quick and easy tracking of a few fairly simple goals, Projects would do nicely.
Goal For It and Quest Booster both provide guidance in setting your goals while still allowing you the freedom to record them in your own way. [Given that support may not be available for Goal For It anymore, you may want to look more at Quest Booster. — Ed.]
Target Assistant Pro is the most tightly structured of the programs I tested, and would be excellent for someone who wants frequent reminders to stay on track with their goals.
No matter how you choose to track your goals, have a safe and successful 2006!
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Projects, visit http://projects4palmos.sourceforge.net.
For more information on Goal For It, visit http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/B0002MCU2W.
For more information on GoalKeeper, visit http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?productId=13186.
For more information on Quest Booster, visit http://www.veroben.com.
For more information on Target Assistant Pro, visit http://www.caproject.com
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
