By now, we've all set our resolutions for the New Year. We're going to be healthier, live more productive and efficient lives, get organized and finally learn a new skill. But by the beginning of February, about 80 percent of us will have already given up on the resolutions we set just weeks ago. This is partially because many of us have resolutions that can't be done as part of our regular daily routine. So how can we beat the odds this year? The 8 Chrome extensions below can help you stick to your resolutions by making it easy to integrate them into your daily lives.
Live A Healthier Life
One popular resolution year-after-year is to live a healthier life. Yet many of us spend the majority of our days at work slouched in front of a computer screen. Though our jobs may require us to sit in front of a computer for eight or more hours of the day, there are tools that can help us be healthier while we do that.
Healthy Browsing
It's common knowledge that we spend far too much time sitting down staring at screens. According to one Nielsen report, the average American adult spends 11 hours a day on electronic devices, and much of that time is spent staring at computer screens. The longer we sit staring at our computer screens, the worse our posture gets and the less we blink our eyes -- which can contribute to things like dry eyes. And we often forget to do healthy things like drinking water or getting up to stretch. The Healthy Browsing Chrome extension allows users to set up timed pop-up reminders to get up and stretch, fix your posture, drink water and blink or take a few seconds to look away from your screen.
Dark Reader
While Healthy Browsing sets pop-up alerts to remind us to get up and stretch or grab a glass of water, the Dark Reader extension helps reduce strain on our eyes by enabling users to set webpages to "dark mode." Dark mode inverts traditional white pages with black text to black pages with white text, which can be much easier on the eyes. The extension also enables users to adjust brightness and increase or decrease contrast, sepia tones, grayscale and even change fonts.
Learn Something New
Each year, many of us promise ourselves we will pick up a new skill or learn a new language. But when it comes down to it, we don't always have the extra hours each day needed to learn something new. The extensions below, however, can help you learn a new language and how to code at your own pace.
Kypsis Language Immersion
The Kypsis Language Immersion extension is an easy way to learn one of more than 60 languages. The extension allows you to choose what percentage of words or sentences of a webpage you want translated and what language you want it translated into. The extension also enables you to hover over the translated text to quickly find the meaning in your native language. People new to a foreign language can choose settings to only translate a few words, while those who are more advanced can choose settings to translate up to 30 percent of words or sentences on a given page.
Coding with Chrome
Coding with Chrome is a great tool for those who have long wanted to learn how to code. The web app, which works both on-and-offline, enables users to learn how to create programs using Blockly, Coffeescript, HTML and JavaScript by visually showing what the code is building. Users can also connect their programs to robotic toys like Sphero and mBot.
Get Organized
Whether it's cleaning out your inbox or setting up processes to more efficiently get your list of to-dos done, getting organized is a common resolution - and the two extensions below can help.
Wunderlist
Wunderlist is a great tool to help you track and share to-dos. The Chrome extension, which is also available as an app, enables you to create and save to-do lists -- anything from work projects to things you need to pick up from the grocery store to articles you want to read during your train ride home -- and lets you share lists with various collaborators. You can quickly save to-dos across devices, and once you've completed a task, it's easy to mark it as complete.
LastPass
The average person has 27 different online logins, according to Intel Security. That means that in addition to remembering things in our everyday personal and professional lives, we also have to remember 27 distinct passwords. And with an increase in online hacking and security issues, many of us have complicated and distinct passwords for each account that can be hard to remember. Which means that oftentimes we forget our passwords and spend time resetting passwords to new passwords (that we probably won't remember). LastPass is a password manager that allows you to save all of your usernames and passwords in one place, and all of this information is available with one login and password. The Chrome extension also enables autologin functionality across multiple sites.
Be More Productive
Many of us regularly look for ways to increase our productivity, and the easiest way to do that is to gain efficiencies in our routine, day-to-day activities. For the majority of us, that means finding more productive ways to do everything from checking email to creating and sharing documents and presentations. It's also important to know how and where you're spending your time throughout the day, so you're aware of how much time you're spending doing various tasks. The Chrome extensions below can help you understand where you can save time and also help you save time doing common tasks.
Be Limitless
For those of us to sometimes catch ourselves on Facebook or Twitter for too long, or at 5 pm realize we've spent the majority of the day responding to emails rather than crossing off our list of to-dos, Be Limitless can help. The extension allows users to input to-dos, track how much time is spent doing various tasks like reading news, checking email or spending time on social media and makes it easy to identify where you spend too much, or too little, time. The extension also shows your weekly or monthly productivity reports and gives suggestions on how to be more productive.
Shortcuts for Google
We spend countless hours a day on Google doing everything from searching for information to checking directions on Google Maps to collaborating on Google Apps. With Shortcuts for Google, users can get two-click access to more than 250 Google products and services from Gmail to Search to Drive straight from the Chrome browser.
As January comes to a close, many of us will give up on our resolutions because they're too lofty of goals or they require large changes in our daily lives. But by integrating some of the simple tools above into our daily routines, we can live healthier, more productive lives.