We all want to better ourselves. Whether it is becoming more healthy, fit, productive, learning a new skill or educating ourselves, it is almost guaranteed that an app exists that can help us do it. Whilst there is a plethora of health and fitness as well as educational and goal setting apps, the personal development space is surprisingly not that well developed. 

In a world of more empowered people who no longer have jobs for life and need to forge their own paths to success, isn't self-growth and development going to become even more important?

There are currently over 4 billion apps available on the most popular app stores and their usage has grown by 52 percent in the last year. The health and fitness category is the second fastest growing after music. Research suggests that there is a good reason for why this is so – but only if you are already healthy. In fact, health and fitness apps help 66 percent of those who already maintain a healthy diet. 

Some of my favourite health and fitness apps include, Charity Miles, which allows users to earn money for charity every time they run, walk, or cycle, Endomondo, which tracks users’ outdoor activities and offers training plans and coaching features, Fitbit, the world’s leading app for tracking all day activity, workouts, sleep, which incorporates wearable tech and Runtastic Results, is a freemium personal training app, which devises a personal 12 week programme based on your ability and goals. 

These apps have been successful in providing better education in physical health as well as personalisation using clever user interaction and have united like minded individuals.

Could we learn something from them to devise better apps for our professional and career development? 

It's true that there are various habit and goal tracking and coach matching mobile apps such as Habit List, LifeTick and Coach.me. However, there is a distinctive lack of comprehensive, personal development apps for highly skilled professionals, entrepreneurs and experts.

A good friend and serial entrepreneur Roberta Lucca is working on finding a solution to this problem. Take her very short survey (I did mine) to help gauge interest in this area and provide valuable insight into what the reservations / challenges are. 

I believe, that like health and fitness apps, personal development apps will be most effective when used by people who have a genuine desire to better themselves. No app can magic up motivation.

What are your thoughts when it comes to personal development? Are there apps out there that do this? 

If so, I’d love to hear which work for you. 

Email me your thoughts.