The better part of my NYE and New Year’s Day was spent hearing the question, “What are your resolutions for this year?” and then listening to the answers. I don’t ask that question, as I’m swearing off resolutions in favor of making goals for the year. But when you get right down to it, they’re pretty much two sides of the same coin. They both represent changes that we want to make. It’s really just a case of semantics for many people.

As I listened to my wife, kids, and friends discuss their changes for 2015 a couple of things struck me. Everybody seems to have too many changes they want to make…and they want to make them all at once. Let’s face it, it’s taken all our lives to get where we are, and most of the things that we want to change took a long time to evolve to this point. It’s kind of ridiculous to imagine that we can make wholesale changes, that are going to last, in any short amount of time. Sure, there are some things that we can change immediately, but the object is to make changes that are going to last.

I can go cold-turkey and give up Diet Drinks today. I might even be able to stick with it. More likely though, if I go from frequent consumption to zero ounces of Diet Dr. Pepper I’m going to end up giving up on that goal or resolution and end up back to buying 2 liter bottles by the shopping cartful in fairly short order. In reality, to accomplish real change in our lives takes time.

In this microwaved-meals, 30-second commercial, sound-bite world that we live in, getting into something for the long haul is difficult if not impossible. It takes a ton of determination and inner strength to stick with a decision to change some aspect of your life. And in my case, it takes a lot of nagging. I’d love to say reminding, but that would be too subtle. I need to be nagged. And then nagged some more. Guilt is apparently quite a motivator for me.

To that end, I’ve been using the Coach.me app and website. This used to be called Lift but they changed their name at the start of the year. I liked the original name, it always felt inspirational to me…but honestly if they’d changed their name to Nag.me it would have been even more appropriate. Coach.me is alright in my book, it’s still a bit uplifting while containing a dose of nagging.

The idea behind Coach.me is that you set goals for yourself that you want to accomplish on a recurrent basis, and then you get the opportunity to check them off as they are accomplished. For instance, I have Drink 128 ounces of water daily as a goal. Every day that I drink the gallon of water, I check it off. There are a few other people who share that goal, and I’ve configured my Coach.me profile to allow them to see my progress. Once in a while I’ll get a message congratulating me on my success. The website will also remind me of goals in my iOS notifications and congratulate me on successfully completing a series of checks. So if I drink 128 ounces every day for three days, I’ll get a notification giving me props. On the other hand, I’ll get a gentle reminder that I’ve set that as a goal if I haven’t checked it off in a couple of days.

The gentle reminders are simply a nice way of nagging me. But it works, and I’ll often find myself chugging water like crazy that day that I get the reminder message. I’ve been trying to drink this much water since Thanksgiving, so I’ve got almost seven weeks under my belt. I’ve been much more successful than I thought I would be…and a lot of it has to do with Coach.me.

Coach.me is simply a tool that I’ve used to help me try to remind myself of some of the goals that I want to accomplish. It’s nothing fancy, but that’s part of it’s appeal. If you’re looking for something to help you stay on track with your resolutions or goals, this might be a tool worth considering.

Make it a great day!