Better Me

For those who have trouble making their 8:30 a.m. classes, ‘BetterMe’ provides a fun and ingenious way to wake up in the morning. The app is based on a simple idea—post a status update on your Facebook profile each time you hit that dreaded snooze button. Essentially, ‘BetterMe’ is a productivity app which uses public humiliation as a motivator to overcome grogginess in the morning. Available on the iPhone for free, it is a highly effective wake up tool that will publicly shame you into getting up.

Zombies, run!

Add motivation to your workout by jogging through a zombie apocalypse with ‘Zombies, Run!’ Available on the iPhone, Windows phone, and Android for $7.99, this app turns a boring jog in the park into an exciting game of survival. Co-created with British awardwinning novelist Naomi Alderman, ‘Zombies, Run!’ acts as an immersive running game and audio adventure that connects 33 different storytelling missions to your workout.

The app delivers constant instructions to your headphones through voice recordings. It tells you to run to different locations in order to collect supplies, such as medicine, batteries, and ammunition, in a post-apocalyptic world infested with zombies. Upon successful completion of each task, you can assign these resources to your colony and watch it grow. Failure to go for a run and complete your mission will result in the death of your colony from a lack of supplies. ‘Zombies, Run!’ channels the excitement of a zombie game into a fitness app, providing a completely original (and frightening) workout experience.

Fitsby

‘Fitsby,’ a free Android app, makes not going to the gym serious. In order to provide motivation to work out, it allows users to earn money for going to the gym, paid for by friends who didn’t make it there. The app works by turning exercise into a game of gym check-ins, in which you compete with your friends for the number of times you “check in” to the gym using GPS. For further motivation, Fitsby allows users to up the stakes by wagering money on their exercise goals. Once the game has started, users must exercise for 30 minutes before the “check-out” option becomes available. By the end of the game, gym goers who have met their goals are rewarded money from their friends who did not do it, based on the wagers set at the beginning of the game.