The best way to stay motivated with widgets, honestly

A widget won't do the work

A sentence on a phone has never lifted anything. We make a quote widget and we have no study to show you that one makes people go to the gym, pay off a card or finish a thesis. If a widget helps at all, it helps in a small way, by putting a useful thought in your eyeline at the moment you'd otherwise be choosing something else.

That small way is still worth having, since you look at your Lock Screen before you open anything, and you do it many times a day.

Pick a line for one exact moment

Most motivational lines fail because they're about nothing in particular. “Believe in yourself” could apply to anyone, on any day, so your brain files it with the wallpaper.

Pick the moment you lose. Be precise about it.

• Parked outside the gym, considering the drive home
• Ten at night, standing in the kitchen with the cupboard open
• Sunday at six, when Monday has already started in your stomach
• Thumb on the banking app, not wanting to look

Change it before it goes invisible

Anything you see a hundred times a day stops registering. You've probably stopped reading your own wallpaper. A line that hit hard on Monday can be furniture within a fortnight, and a widget that never changes will get there first.

There are two ways around this, and which you want depends on how you use your phone. A slower rotation lets a line sink in and suits people who like to sit with one thought. A faster one keeps you reading. Free widgets in Quill change daily, and Pro widgets can change up to hourly. Hourly is good for a hard week, and it can be a lot in an ordinary one. Try daily first, and change it when you catch yourself no longer looking.

One category or a mix

Use one category when one thing is hard right now. If you're in week three at the gym or the first month after a breakup, you don't want a line about money turning up on your way to the car.

A mix suits a calmer patch, when you'd like some variety and some surprise. Quill's Pro widgets can mix several categories, and you can set each widget separately, so a focused Lock Screen and a wider Home Screen can sit on the same phone. One caution: if you mix the gentle collections with the brisk ones, a dry joke about snoozing can land right after something quiet. Keep Grief & Loss or Feeling Down on their own widget if that would bother you.

Write your own for the moment nobody else knows about

No library knows that your hard moment is the school run, or the third email from one particular person. A line you wrote about that will beat a better sentence by a famous dead Roman, at least for that moment. My Lines in Quill is free for your first 3 lines and unlimited with Pro, and your lines can go on your widgets. There's a separate guide on how to write one that holds up.

When to take it off

If a line starts to feel like nagging, change it. If a widget makes a low day feel worse, remove it. A Lock Screen is a small, personal space, and you don't owe it anything. If what you're carrying is heavier than a quote can touch, talk to someone who can help.