Who doesn’t love a life hack? Apps would have to be the most useful, innovative tools for life hacking invented this century. With the potential to save us time and money, connect us to like minded people and rich content from thought leaders and creators across the globe, all in the palm of our hands, carried around in our hip pockets.
Rarely have I needed a life hack and not been able to find an App to short cut my way there.
As a digital native and lover of innovation, I wanted to share my favourite life hack Apps, the ones I have on daily or more frequent rotation as I move through my rituals and daily routine.
Insight Timer
80,000 meditations, live events and a tracker to help you build and sustain a regular habit of sitting in stillness.
Select your time, the type of meditation you’re seeking, and hit “play”.
Simple to use and catering to beginners as well as experienced meditators, I love this app so much! Their anxiety meditations I’ve found particularly helpful, including a 2 minute circuit breaker that I can attest has been very effective in calming me down when I need it. You can read more about healing anxiety in this Well Club post.
Lumosity
My lovely friend Charlotte pointed me in the direction of this neat little brain training app. In as little as 5 minutes per day, using the free version, you can complete 3 brain training exercises to sharpen your skills in maths, launguage, logical thinking, planning and more.
I noticed the mornings I was hungover, I didn’t perform so well… interesting!
Using gamification, these fun exercises can help improve your memory, your focus and your mental agility – all whilst you’re waiting for the bus or in line for your coffee!
8 fit
I love an app that integrates your diet and exercise in one place, offering suggestions for food and workouts so I don’t have to think too much. That’s what 8 fit did for me. Tracking my food and exercise made me acutely aware of the impact of those afternoons and evenings of wine drinking and gave me a sense of achievement when I completed the short circuit style workouts that could be done anywhere (no gym, no excuse!)
Notes
The notes app on my iphone currently stores 124 notes including reading lists, various “to do” lists, ideas and briefing notes from presentations I’ve been to and my bucket list.
This must be the simplest life hack app of all because we never know when we’re going to get a good idea, have a light bulb moment or remember we need to stock up on pantry staples. You can share your lists with others (“honey, here’s the shopping list if you wouldn’t mind stopping off on your way home…”) and link them to photographs (like before and after photos on your 7 day detox…).
I’ve also found it particularly useful for when I have an idea about something because I can’t trust my memory.
Hey You
Anything that saves me time is a hit in my book. Ordering my morning chai tea in the driveway so it’s ready when I pull into the local cafe is in my book one of the great upsides of our on demand society. With Hey You you can save your favourite orders, order food as well as drinks, find the cafe nearest to you and pay using credit, debit or apple pay – dead easy.
Period tracker
There are lots of these apps around, I use bellabeat, because it’s simple and meets my single need for knowing when my next period is due. You can record symptoms – useful if you’re looking for patterns in anxiety, weight gain, back pain or other maladies – and it also records fertility windows if you’re planning a family.
One less thing to worry about, or catch me by surprise (most the time!)
You might also like…
- Jumbo Privacy – take control of your data and understand your privacy threats based on who you’re sharing information with online;
- Bear Notes – a sexy upgrade to the Notes App on your phone, I’m about to download this one today;
- Kitchen Stories – OMG I wish I’d invented this app. A community of recipes where you can filter, including by main ingredient, find something you like and get the recipe AND an instructional video as well as create a shopping list of the ingredients. As a meal planning foodie, this is definitely the next big thing in my life;
- Duolingo – whether you’re dreaming of travel or still planning an overseas vacation where your language isn’t the spoken language, this is a great way to brush up on high school French or start Italian from scratch. I’ve used it for exactly that, and with the added lure of gamification, it truly does make language learning fun for adults and kids alike
To make it easy to learn more about wellness hack apps, including those you never knew you needed until you discovered them, you might like to read this.
And just in case none of these apps float your boat, you might like to read this for some of the weirdest apps currently circulating the planet – like the Nothing App, the App where you throw your phone until it breaks, virtual shaving and cow milking and an App built like a social media platform but its only you who can see your posts! You’re welcome…
the-well-club.com 