70+ Ways to Use GOALD

Most people download a habit tracker to do one thing. Drink more water. Hit the gym. Read before bed. That’s a fine place to start, but it’s a little like buying a truck to haul one load.

GOALD does a lot more than check boxes, and much of it is free. So here are 70+ (and growing) different use cases we could think of to use it, from the obvious to the ones our own users had to show us. Steal the ones that fit your life and skip the rest.

Anything marked (Builder) is part of the GOALD Builder plan ($24 a year – about the cost of a pack of gum per month). Everything else is FREE to live your best life.

1. [Habits] Use a times-per-week habit for the gym, three days a week, so a rest day never breaks your streak.
2. [Habits] Use specific days for anything on a schedule: Sunday meal prep, trash night, piano lessons on Tuesday and Thursday.
3. [Habits] Use a limit habit to cut back on something: no more than 3 drinks a week, or takeout twice a week at most.
4. [Habits] Use a number habit when the goal has a count: 20 pages, 8 glasses of water, 50 pushups.
5. [Habits] Write your reasons why on the habit, so the reason is right in front of you on the days you don’t feel like it.
6. [Habits] Set a reminder for the time you actually plan to do it: vitamins at 8 AM, journaling at 9 PM.
7. [Habits] Map each habit to an area of your life (one of “The 10 Commandments of the Lifestyle Architect“ book by Matt Stefanik), then look at your Pyramid to see which parts of your life get your attention and which get none.
8. [Habits] Habit suggestions: Know what you want but not which habit gets you there? Tap the + button, pick a goal like Drink less, Sleep better or Read more, and GOALD suggests where to start, beginning with something small enough that you won’t quit.
9. [Habits] Already on a streak in another app? Fill in “Already on a streak?” and keep counting from where you are.
10. [Hitches and Routines] Hitch a new habit to something you already do every day: “While my coffee is brewing, I’ll take my vitamins.” The thing you already do becomes the reminder. (Builder)
11. [Hitches and Routines] Build a morning routine, like breathwork, then meditating, then reading, and tap Start to be walked through it one step at a time. (Builder)
12. [Hitches and Routines] Give the whole routine one reminder, so you get one ping in the morning instead of five. (Builder)
13. [Hitches and Routines] Flexible routines: Put your gym day in your routine even though it’s three days a week. Once you’ve hit your three, the routine walks right past it for the rest of the week. (Builder)
14. [Hitches and Routines] Make an evening routine to wind down: no screens, stretch, gratitude, lights out. (Builder)
15. [Just Tracking (No Goal, No Pressure)] Track an amount: See how many drinks you have per week before you set a goal, so you know a realistic number to cut back to.
16. [Just Tracking (No Goal, No Pressure)] Track how often: See how many days a week you already work out, then set the real habit one step above that.
17. [Just Tracking (No Goal, No Pressure)] Track stats: See your average times/week and amount/occurrence honestly before you change it: cups of coffee, cigarettes, hours of sleep, dollars spent eating out. For example: “Average days per week you drink: 3.5” + “Average drinks per days you drink: 4.7”. Useful.
18. [Just Tracking (No Goal, No Pressure)] Track something for a while just to learn about yourself, with no goal, no streak, no XP to earn or lose. A tracked day can never be “missed.”
19. [Just Tracking (No Goal, No Pressure)] Need a break from the pressure on a habit? Move it back to Just tracking. Your history comes with it, and the XP and badges you earned stay.
20. [Just Tracking (No Goal, No Pressure)] Open Year at a Glance on a tracked behavior to see your patterns, like which months you drink more or work out less. (Builder)
21. [Timers] Meditate with a stopwatch. Start it, sit as long as the sitting lasts, tap Finish, and the habit checks itself off.
22. [Timers] Count your meditation in minutes, and every session you time adds its minutes to today. Then see your minutes a week and how many days a week you actually sat.
23. [Timers] Time your audiobook, a stretch routine or instrument practice with a countdown. It remembers the length you picked, so next time it’s one tap.
24. [Timers] Use Focus on the Timer tab to work in rounds: 25 minutes on, 5 off, or any lengths you like, until you tap Finish.
25. [Timers] Use the Stopwatch with Lap for your workout: one lap per set, or per mile, while the total keeps running.
26. [Timers] Use the Timer tab to time anything at all, a nap, the oven, a phone-free hour, no habit needed. When it ends, GOALD asks if it should count toward a habit.
27. [Checklists] Make a grocery list where checked items disappear as you shop.
28. [Checklists] Send that grocery list to your spouse as their own copy.
29. [Checklists] Send a honey-do list with “Keep a copy and see their check-offs” turned on, so you can see what’s done without asking.
30. [Checklists] Make a morning checklist that comes back fresh every day with the same items.
31. [Checklists] Keep today’s to-dos, and anything you didn’t finish carries over to tomorrow.
32. [Checklists] Keep a weekly to-do list that starts clean every week.
33. [Checklists] Set a monthly checklist with a reminder on a date: pay the bills, change the air filter, back up the photos.
34. [Checklists] Make a packing list for a trip, or a checklist for a move or a project.
35. [Checklists] Someone texted you a list? Paste it in and every line becomes its own item (this is my favorite thing about checklists!).
36. [Checklists] Use your phone keyboard’s microphone to say your grocery list out loud, and each item lands on its own line.
37. [Notes and Gratitude] Use Notes to keep any thought you don’t want to forget.
38. [Notes and Gratitude] Keep gift ideas for your family in a note, all year long, so you’re never stuck in December.
39. [Notes and Gratitude] Take notes on a book or a podcast while it’s fresh.
40. [Notes and Gratitude] Search your notes months later. Type “elliptical cardio” and the note about your cardio day comes right up, in any order. (Builder)
41. [Notes and Gratitude] Write 3, 4 or 5 things you’re grateful for each day. Finishing the entry checks off your Gratitude habit for you.
42. [Notes and Gratitude] Search your gratitude statements too, and find every day you wrote about your kids. (Builder)
43. [Notes and Gratitude] Lock GOALD with a 4-digit PIN, so your notes and journal stay yours even when someone borrows your phone. It is off until you turn it on.
44. [Notes and Gratitude] Your notes, gratitude journal and mood check-ins are only ever yours. Partners never see them.
45. [Accountability Partners] Send a Cheer to your accountability partner as a pat on the back for completing their daily goals.
46. [Accountability Partners] Use Nudge when your partner’s reminder has gone off and their habit still isn’t done.
47. [Accountability Partners] Shared challenges: Team up with a friend on the same goal, like both of you quitting soda, and watch each other’s progress.
48. [Accountability Partners] Make your spouse your partner and share a “chaos management” checklist to keep track of the things that no one wants to think about (like your annual car tag, taxes, etc.) so they don’t slip through the cracks.
49. [Accountability Partners] Partners see your habits and your last 70 days of check-offs, and nothing else, so you can share your progress and keep the private stuff private.
50. [Mood] Do the mood check-in for two weeks, and after 14 check-ins GOALD shows you which habits lift your mood.
51. [Mood] Check your weekly Mood Weather to see how your week went, not just how today feels.
52. [Mood] Look at your Mood Mosaic to spot the rough stretches, then look at what your habits were doing at the same time.
53. [Progress and Reports] Read your weekly report every week: your score, perfect days, XP and strongest habit. (Builder)
54. [Progress and Reports] Read your monthly report at the start of each month to see the month you just finished. (Builder)
55. [Progress and Reports] Open Year at a Glance on any habit to see every month of the year at once. (Builder)
56. [Progress and Reports] Turn on several habits at once in the Chains calendar to see which ones happen on the same days.
57. [Progress and Reports] Count your perfect days, and chase your best run of them back to back.
58. [Progress and Reports] Download your check-offs as a spreadsheet to make your own charts, or to show your coach or trainer.
59. [When Life Happens] Going on a trip? Plan vacation mode ahead of time, and your streaks wait for you.
60. [When Life Happens] Sick day? On a times-per-week habit, press and hold the check to mark today a planned skip.
61. [When Life Happens] Missed yesterday? A streak saver keeps your streak alive.
62. [When Life Happens] Forgot to check something off? You can fill in any of the last 10 days.
63. [When Life Happens] Starting a new year or a new season? Start over with a clean slate and keep your badges and XP, or clear everything.
64. [When Life Happens] Need a break from the app? “Just delete for now but keep my stats” signs you out, turns off your reminders, and keeps everything waiting for you.
65. [Rewards] Earn a badge or rank up, then tap Go brag to share it to Facebook, Instagram or a text.
66. [Rewards] Watch your XP and rank climb. Missing a day never takes XP away.
67. [Daily Challenges] Add Pentomino to your Daily Challenges to practice fitting shapes together and thinking in space. Spatial skills improve with practice, and the gains carry over to other spatial tasks (Uttal et al., 2013). (Builder)
68. [Daily Challenges] Add Sudoku for a few minutes of logic before you start the day. In a study of more than 19,000 adults over 50, the people who did number puzzles most often scored better on tests of reasoning, attention and memory (Brooker et al., 2019). (Builder)
69. [Daily Challenges] Add Vocabulary (10 multiple choice questions) and Trivia (5 new questions – you pick the genres and difficulty level) and learn something new every day. Pulling an answer from memory makes it stick far better than rereading it (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006), and people remember answers they were curious about better (Gruber, Gelman and Ranganath, 2014). (Builder)
70. [Daily Challenges] Add Solitaire as a break that beats scrolling. Every game can be solved, so when you get stuck you can undo all the way back and choose differently.
71. [Daily Challenges] Read the Quote of the Day (every quote has a real, documented source) for a daily does of inspiration.
72. [Daily Challenges] Read “This Day In History” to learn a historical fact about something that happened on the same day as the current day at some point in the past.

Summary

I built GOALD because nothing I found was that app. The same shit you hate, I hate – ads after every thing, the things that made it worthwhile gated from the get-go, the annoying things outweighing the valuable things. I get it. So, in true rebel fashion, I built the app I needed to help get me back on path to my highest and best self. It has helped me tremendously. I sincerely hope it will for you too.

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