By Ken Satterfield
What do you want to accomplish in the year ahead? January is a great time to start a resolution — Time magazine says nearly half of us will. So use this week to start the resolution you made last week. Perhaps you have listed goals you would like to accomplish. These Internet sites may help:
De-clutter. A sign in my office proclaims, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, what is the sign of an empty desk?” For positive organizational steps, LifeOrganizers.com has tips by category, while Unclutterer.com and Organized Home are blogs to help guide you. Evernote can help you “remember things” and access them through the Web, by phone or by computer.
Money management. Take charge of your money with Mint.com, which includes budgeting tools and lets you access your accounts and rate-comparison plans. Christian financial guru Dave Ramsey offers tools and recommended reading on his website. And Wise Bread is designed for frugal living.
Good health. Health and nutrition are near the top of everyone’s resolution list. At WebMD you can find a healthy eating and diet section along with health conditions, tips for living better and more than 40 newsletters. Medscape provides news, specialty sites and a drug-interaction chart.
Watch your diet. Fitday allows you to set up a free account to track food, exercise, weight loss and goals.
Enjoy music. Using Pandora or last.fm allows you to custom-build your own station based on your music preferences, or use Musicovery to base choices on your mood. Grooveshark will stream any music you like, and AccuRadio has preset streamed radio channels based on genre, such as Broadway, classical or decades.
Read a book or the Book. Bookarmy uses the power of social networking to help you share and discover books based on your interests. Set up similar to Pandora, BookLamp.org finds titles based on your reading history. Start a variety of Bible-reading plans at BibleGateway.com or Bibleyear.com, or subscribe to daily devotionals at crosswalk.com/devotionals or Devotional Christian.
Learn. If gaining knowledge or learning something new is a goal this year, sites such as Lifehacker or eHow can help you get started. You can investigate online degree programs at eLearners.com or free classes at distancelearn.about.com.
Relationships. Meebo.com lets you keep track of all your instant messaging in one place — from the original ICQ to Facebook and MySpace. You can organize your social-profile network through GizaPage.
Time management. If time is an issue, check out the time-management tab at Mind Tools to analyze time usage, beat procrastination and set goals. Install Meetimer as a Firefox extension to better track Web usage and time.