Smartphones have become ubiquitous elements of our lives. We wake up with them, keep them on us at all times, and fall asleep with them next to us. We use them for anything from texting and social media to calendar management and research.
One of the best ways to use your smartphone is to take care of everyday tasks using apps. You’d be surprised how many tools there are that can streamline your life. Here are six to-do list items you can tackle with an app.
1. Personal Healthcare
You can address your personal healthcare needs with your smartphone. For certain subjects, like personal healthcare, apps provide the privacy that you may not get using your family or work computer. Plus, using a smartphone app means that you have 24/7 access to the healthcare information you need.
You can manage common conditions with a medical app. For patients of commonly stigmatized conditions like STIs and mental health issues, relevant apps help you seek advice with confidence. Some common issues you might find an app for include depression support, menstrual cycle tracking and discussion, and genital herpes treatments.
STIs are common, and there is no reason to be embarrassed, but wanting privacy is understandable. Whatever medical issues you have, you’ll be able to find a welcoming platform for support and care.
2. Fitness
Tracking your fitness data is a complicated, time-consuming task. Counting calories alone requires intimate cataloging of everything you eat. Planning a workout routine is difficult without knowledge of muscle groups or safety guidelines.
However, there is a way to make fitness a little easier through the many different progress-tracking programs available. These applications are almost always formulated for convenience and accessibility. You can meet your goals by simply entering your food and water intake and tracking your physical activity.
There are many high-quality choices for those looking for a workout routine that will plan one for you. These apps help create and maintain routines, but many of them also track body changes over time. Various others also do so by tracking food intake, which can be done independently or alongside fitness tracking. Bring your fitness under control by using a combination of these apps to track your health.
3. Healthy Sleep Scheduling
If you have trouble with sleep quality, a potential solution is to download a sleep tracking app. Before your slumber, you can activate the app. As you sleep, it records your sounds and movement to analyze your sleeping stages. This info is used to create a personalized sleep timer to maximize your REM sleep and wake you during your lightest sleep stage.
If you have trouble with heavy sleeping or habitual alarm snoozing, you can try an alarm designed specifically for these issues. Some of these clocks are designed to be as obnoxious as possible to prevent you from oversleeping. These clocks may even force you to do puzzles, calculations, or trivia to silence it. As annoying as it sounds, your schedule will thank you in the end.
4. Workflow Efficiency
Using an application that streamlines your workflow can mean the difference between success and failure. You could complete the bare minimum of a task but also establish consistent quality and turnaround. Working with a team also means that meaningful communication is key to this success, and it’s important to facilitate it.
Workspace applications like Notion and ClickUp are designed to provide an organization through accessible UI and flexible functionality. A short series of messages and postings in the app can fully replace an in-person kickoff meeting. It can also provide a space for asynchronous discussion, allowing the work to be undertaken more efficiently. If you look to improve your personal workflow, there are similar programs for individual scheduling and task automation.
5. Mathematical Calculations
Whether you’re figuring out the tip after dinner or calculating your income, the math involved can be difficult and confusing. For those who are not math-oriented, our smartphone’s calculator function has saved our lives many times. But how do you go about a calculation that you don’t know how to input?
Some apps can take math problems of all kinds and evaluate the input they receive. They can re-format, find the answer, and give you tips on how to do it yourself. Wolfram Alpha is a well known example of this that also essentially functions as an encyclopedia. Other apps like Photomath are even more convenient — all it needs is a photo of the problem to evaluate. What once required a certain amount of math savvy now requires even less while still giving you the answers you need.
Believe it or not, your time navigating customer service can be reduced or avoided entirely through the use of apps. If you’re tired of talking to a machine every time you call customer service about a problem, please press 1. the Specialized ones like getting Human and LucyPhone do the waiting for you.
These apps use previously established libraries to automatically answer the machine until they reach a real support person. When they finally do, you will receive an alert and can pick up from there. While it seems a simple enough task, this can save you hours and prevent the system from occupying your day. While customer service trees were once the bane of our existence, they no longer have to be.
From your healthcare needs to helping your kids with homework, you can be sure there’s an app for that. While you could take care of these tasks in other ways, doing so may require time or money you don’t have. It’s not easy to regulate your sleep schedule without an outside influence or find affordable healthcare support. By letting apps help you navigate your life, you can get back some much-needed time.