Trying to improve yourself in any way can be very difficult in our hectic and busy world.
There are so many things that we need to do on a daily basis that it can be hard to find the time to do things for ourselves.
This can lead to us feeling like we are stuck in a rut in our lives which can have a significant impact on our self-esteem and mental health.
Thankfully, in a world that is increasingly technology-focused, there are plenty of apps that can make personal growth much easier and more attainable.
One of the most popular apps on the market is Headway.
In this article, we will read the Headway app review, looking at the features, the interface, and the pricing.
What Is Headway App?
Headway is an app that is available on Android and IOS operating systems that has been designed to make personal growth more accessible and easier for users.
The main focus of the app is to provide a condensed version of books that can be read in 15 minutes as opposed to multiple days.
The books in the app are summarized by professionals who also add their own insights into the books.
The suggested books in the app are personalized to you from a quiz that you have to take.
This helps keep the books relevant to the ways in which you want to improve yourself. There are also some challenges that you can take to see how much you can accomplish in 28 days.
Features Of Headway
The first thing that we should look at is the features that are offered by the Headway app, afterall, they are what really sells a personal growth app.
Book Summaries
As we mentioned above, the main feature of the Headway app is to provide book summaries.
There are thousands of non-fiction titles on the app that have been summarized by experts in the relevant field who also offer their own insights into the content of the book.
To make it easy to find books on the subjects that you are interested in, there are different categories on the app for you to browse through.
For example, if you are looking to achieve personal growth that can make you happier, there is a category of books on happiness.
Each of the book summaries on the Headway app last for 15 minutes on average which makes them perfect for those short moments that you have during the day to read.
You can read a summary or two on your way to or from work, or even when you are waiting for the kids on the school run.
The point of the short summaries is to provide you with the key points and lessons from the books in the least amount of time so that you can get the benefit of the book without spending hours and hours reading them over an extended period of time.
Audio Lessons
If your life is so busy that even the thought of trying to find time to read a 15 summary is laughable, the Headway app could still be for you.
You can also access audio lessons that you can listen to on the go via the app.
The audio lessons are essentially audio versions of the summaries that you can read. They are all read by professional voice actors which makes them clear and easy to listen to.
In addition to the well produced audio, the Headway app also features some pretty useful audio control options.
In addition to the usual play/pause, skip, and rewind buttons, there is also the option to have a specific lesson or point repeated as many times as you want to make sure that your brain has properly absorbed it.
It also means that you can skip to a certain point in a favorite lesson to listen to poignant moments whenever you want.
Goal Orientated Collections
As we briefly mentioned above, all of the summaries and audio lessons are organized into categories.
There are also collections of summaries and audio lessons that have been organized by the goals that you are looking to achieve.
This can take a lot of stress out of using this app.
Because there are so many titles available, it can be overwhelming to think about having to scroll through them to find ones that can help you.
However, by setting a personal goal for yourself you can find collections of useful and suitable books that have been grouped together thanks to their usefulness for the goal that you have set.
This makes it a whole lot easier to find relevant titles and books that are actually going to help you.
No one wants to spend hours scrolling through thousands of books when all they wanted was to read a 15 minute summary.
You can also set more than one goal for yourself at a time so you can swap between them if you have more than 15 minutes available to you.
This is possible because the Headway app lessons and summaries don’t cram too much information into the point of making you forget the previous lesson if you decide to double stack.
Daily Plans
As you use the Headway app you will be able to set yourself daily goals and plans that the app will nudge you to stick to.
This can be something as simple as listening or reading on the app for 20 minutes per day. This can be a great way to help you make using the app a daily habit.
You will also have access to a daily motivational quote that is related to personal growth, self-care, or sometimes the goals that you have set for yourself.
This can be incredibly useful in keeping you motivated to use the app more often.
Progression Monitoring
The final feature of the Headway app is the excellent progression monitoring that can be super helpful in keeping you motivated and encouraging you to use the app on a daily basis.
Like many education or personal growth apps, you can build up streaks on the Headway app.
This is an excellent feature that is proven to help on apps like these, especially if you have a competitive streak and want to build your streak to win awards.
You can keep your streak going by hitting your daily goals every day.
Using this app every day and building your streak will also help you to see more progress in your daily life more quickly as personal growth becomes a daily habit.
Interface And Performance
The Headway app is available via three different interfaces.
You can download the app onto your IOS phone or tablet, onto your Android phone or tablet, and onto your PC.
All of these versions are very similar and are used in the same way which makes it easy to switch from learning on your phone to learning on your laptop or desktop computers.
To make the app more user-friendly, you will need to pay for the premium version of the app.
When you have the premium version the app will begin to learn your preferences and interests which then allows it to recommend titles that you may be interested in or find helpful.
You can still make use of the app on all interfaces without the premium version. However, you will not receive personalized recommendations from the app.
This isn’t the end of the world but if you are serious about your personal growth, you might end up missing out on titles that could really help you or provide some extra awareness surrounding your life or behaviors.
Plans And Pricing
There is a 7-day free trial that is available when you download the Headway app.
This is pretty standard practice for apps of this nature to give you a chance to try the app before you have to commit to a payment plan.
Once your free trial is over, there are three different pricing plans that you can choose from to access the app and all of the premium features.
You can choose from a weekly subscription where you will pay an amount each week, a monthly subscription where you will pay monthly, and a yearly subscription where you only pay once a year.
The most popular subscription is the monthly subscription, however, this is not the cheapest way to subscribe to this app if you are planning to use it for more than a couple of months.
If you are planning to use the app long term, the yearly subscription is the cheapest option.
Although it might feel like a lot of money to pay in one lump, it works out to be significantly cheaper than either of the other options.
If you have a specific, short term goal in mind with this app, paying for the weekly or monthly subscription is best.
Pros Of Headway
The seven-day free trial gives you a great insight into the app, what it is like to use, and it allows you to see how likely you are to use the app every day.
This is really useful when trying to decide whether you sign up for an app.
If you still aren’t sure about the app after the free trial ends and you want to continue using the app to see if you will use it, the option for a weekly subscription can be really useful.
On the free or non-premium version of the app, you can access one free text summary every day and one free audio lesson every day.
This is quite generous and could be more than enough for anyone who is really busy but is interested in personal growth.
With the premium version of the app, you get access to many more summaries and audio lessons every day.
The user interface of the app is incredibly user friendly on all platforms which makes it a very attractive option, even for those who aren’t tech savvy.
The illustrations that are included in the summaries make reading much more captivating.
They aren’t just random either, they have been designed to help you retain the information that you are reading by stimulating your engagement with the app.
The personalization that is available with the premium version of the app makes it a really nice app to use.
It also means that you don’t have to waste a lot of your limited time searching for relevant titles and summaries that you want to read.
Finally, the quality of the audio lessons and the summaries that you can access through the app is very high.
The books that are featured in the app are all research-based and have science behind the lessons and guides.
Also, each summary and audio lesson is reviewed by moderators to ensure that they are accurate and up to an acceptable standard.
This helps to ensure that all the summaries are as useful as each other.
Cons Of Headway
As with any app or business, there are some cons that might be a bit of a turn off for some customers or potential customers.
One of the main cons of the Headway app is the limited amount of free access to the app.
The seven-day free trial allows you access to some of the premium features as most free trials do.
However, when the trial ends and you are left with the free version, there are a lot of restrictions that can make the app a bit bothersome to use.
The main limitations are the lack of personalization with the free version which means that you don’t get relevant recommendations.
Another limitation is that you can only access one summary and one audio lesson per day.
Another con of the app is that the subscriptions are quite expensive.
The materials that you get access to with this app are high quality and the work of the experts and moderators needs to be compensated.
However, the prices of the subscriptions seem unreasonably high.
Additionally, the structure of the price plans doesn’t seem very logical with the weekly and monthly subscriptions costing hundreds of dollars more than the yearly subscription which seems excessive.
Final Thoughts
The Headway app is a great option for anyone who is interested in investing in their personal growth but doesn’t have a lot of time to spare in their schedule.
The premium version is superior to the free version, but make sure you choose the best subscription plan for you to avoid spending hundreds of dollars unnecessarily.