Technology has made it easier than ever to track different aspects of our lives and wellbeing. From managing our time to monitoring our health and finances, there is a huge selection of apps available that can improve your life. While some view technology as a distraction, when used properly, it can actually help us stay more organized, healthy, and balanced. The key is being mindful about how and when we use our devices.
The right apps can provide structure, guidance, and accountability in areas we struggle with. Apps can remind us of important events and deadlines so we don’t drop the ball. They can provide insights into spending and savings so we can meet financial goals. They can suggest healthy recipes and motivate us to exercise. And they can even help us develop gratitude, reduce stress, and bring more mindfulness into each day.
In the sections below, I’ll introduce some of my favorite apps and explain how they help me manage major aspects of my life. From calendar management to fitness tracking, outfit planning to meditation, these apps keep me on track with my responsibilities, relationships, and wellbeing. While no app is a silver bullet, used thoughtfully, apps to make your life better provide useful tools for staying balanced and organized amidst the craziness of modern life.
1. Google Calendar For Time Management
Google Calendar is an incredibly helpful app to make your life better when managing your time and keeping your life organized. With Google Calendar, you can easily add events, set reminders, and view your schedule all in one place.
Some of the key features of Google Calendar that facilitate time management include:
- Ability to create different calendars – For work, personal, family, etc. This allows you to visually separate the different areas of your life.
- Event creation – Makes it easy to add appointments, meetings, travel plans, and any other events to your calendar. You can include all the key details like date, time, location.
- Reminders – Google Calendar enables you to set reminders leading up to events so you never forget an important meeting or appointment. You can customize the reminder timeframe.
- Schedule view – The daily, weekly, monthly view allows you to see your schedule at a glance so you know exactly what your upcoming days and weeks look like.
- Integration with Gmail – Calendar automatically adds events from Gmail like flight bookings, restaurant reservations, etc.
- Mobile app – The Google Calendar app enables you to access your calendar on the go so you can always stay on top of your schedule.
- Color coding – You can color code your different calendars so you can visually distinguish work, family, travel plans, etc.
With Google Calendar I’m able to see all my commitments in one place. The reminders and schedule view gives me visibility into my days and weeks so I know what’s coming up. It has been invaluable in helping me be organized and effectively manage my time. I don’t know how I’d keep all the parts of my busy life on track without Google Calendar!
2. YNAB Keeps You On Track With Your Budget
YNAB (You Need A Budget) is an incredibly helpful app for budgeting and tracking your spending. By allowing you to connect your bank accounts and credit cards, YNAB automatically imports your transactions and categorizes your spending.
The key benefit of using YNAB is that it makes budgeting simple through its envelope-based system. With YNAB, you allocate every dollar you earn to different “envelopes” representing your expenses, savings goals, etc. When you go to spend money, you can see how much is left in each envelope. This approach helps you stick to your budget by visually representing what you have left to spend.
Some of the key features of YNAB that facilitate budgeting include:
- Easy tracking of all transactions and spending.
- Ability to set budgets for the month and year for all categories of expenses.
- Notifications when you approach or exceed a budget category.
- Flexible budgeting that allows you to roll with the punches and adjust budgets as needed.
- Informative reports on spending and progress towards budgets and financial goals.
YNAB essentially transforms budgeting from a painful restrictive process to an empowering system. By knowing exactly where your money is going, you can make intentional spending decisions and achieve financial goals like getting out of debt or saving for a dream vacation. This app can make your life and much better by simplifing budgeting in a way that keeps users motivated and focused.
3. Streamline Meal Planning And Grocery Shopping With Mealime
Meal planning and grocery shopping can be time-consuming and overwhelming, but Mealime, an app to make your life better, makes it incredibly simple. This app provides recipes complete with built-in grocery lists to take the guesswork out of cooking.
Mealime offers recipe suggestions based on your dietary preferences, so you can easily find options that fit your needs. Whether you want low carb, gluten-free, vegetarian, or vegan meals, Mealime caters to your custom diet.
Once you’ve picked your recipes for the week, Mealime automatically generates a grocery list with all the ingredients you’ll need. You can customize the portions if you want to cook more or less. The app even lets you add items you already have on hand so they aren’t added to the list.
With a few taps, your weekly meal planning and grocery list is complete. Mealime helps you cook delicious home-cooked meals every night, without the hassle of figuring out recipes and shopping lists. The automated grocery list makes sticking to your diet and budget simple. Cooking is easier and more enjoyable with Mealime.
4. Libra For Weight Management
Libra is an excellent app for tracking your weight and weight fluctuations over time. The key feature of Libra is that it provides weight history charts that show the trends in your weight data. This helps smooth out daily fluctuations and provides a better picture of whether you’re losing, gaining, or maintaining over longer periods.
Libra allows you to easily log your weight on a daily or weekly basis. You can add notes to each measurement, like whether you weighed yourself in the morning before eating or at night. The app then analyzes your weight data and provides graphs of your weight trends. You can view graphs for different time frames like week, month, and year. This makes it easy to spot patterns.
The weight history charts in Libra are particularly useful for identifying plateaus during weight loss. If the trend line levels out, you’ll know you may need to reassess your diet or exercise regimen to get back on track with your goals. The charts also provide motivation by clearly showing your progress over time.
Libra has some additional handy features like the ability to set target weights and receive reminders to weigh in. You can also configure the app to smooth your weight data, which helps account for normal fluctuations in water weight. Overall, Libra empowers you to better understand your weight trends so you can make informed decisions about your health and wellness goals.
5. Track Your Fitness And Health With Fitbit
Fitbit is one of the most popular fitness trackers that helps users monitor and improve their health and fitness. Fitbit devices like the Charge, Versa, and Sense track key metrics like steps taken, distance covered, calories burned, heart rate, sleep stages, and more.
The easy-to-use Fitbit app syncs your data from the device and provides insights into your activity, exercise, and sleep patterns. You can log food, water intake, weight, and other vitals like blood glucose and blood pressure. The dashboard gives you a quick overview of your daily stats against your goals.
Fitbit Premium offers guided health and fitness programs tailored to your goals, personalized insights, health reports, and over 200 workouts. The community features allow you to add friends, join challenges, share achievements, and motivate each other.
Fitbit helps you make healthier choices by giving you a comprehensive picture of your overall wellbeing. Seeing your progress over time and how your daily habits impact your health can be extremely motivating. The social features add accountability through friendly competition. If you’re looking to boost your activity, improve sleep, manage weight, or monitor heart health, Fitbit has a range of trackers and features to help you reach your goals.
6. Stay Active With Classpass
If there is one app that have changed my life is ClassPass. This app provides access to various fitness classes and gyms, allowing you to try out different workout styles conveniently and affordably. With ClassPass, you can explore new activities like yoga, pilates, boxing, cycling, martial arts, and more at studios around your city.
The variety of class types available via ClassPass subscriptions is extensive. You’re not limited to basic gym machines and weights – you can take dance classes, stretch and flexibility sessions, HIIT bootcamps, barre, kickboxing, and so much more. ClassPass makes it simple to find inspiring new ways to break a sweat and challenge your body.
Whether you’re a fitness class fanatic looking to switch up your routine or someone who finds gyms boring, ClassPass unlocks new active lifestyle possibilities. You can take classes nearby or try places in different neighborhoods for a fresh experience. ClassPass motivates you to continue pursuing health goals while discovering new interests along the way.
7. Acloset – Streamline Your Wardrobe
Acloset is an app that has become invaluable for managing my wardrobe and planning outfits. With Acloset, I can catalog all of my clothing items and access them anytime to mix and match pieces to create outfits. The app makes it so easy to see all the clothes I own in one place. I can enter details like color, fabric, brand, and notes for each item. Acloset even lets me upload photos of each piece, so I have a visual catalog of my wardrobe.
One of my favorite features is the outfit planning functionality. I can select multiple pieces from my catalog and Acloset will automatically generate potential outfits for me to choose from. This takes the guesswork out of getting dressed and helps me put together cohesive looks. I also appreciate that Acloset helps me identify gaps or redundancies in my wardrobe. Since everything is cataloged, I can easily see what types of pieces I’m missing or have too many of. This makes shopping more focused and effective.
By streamlining my wardrobe management into one app, Acloset saves me time and reduces stress around getting dressed. I don’t have to dig through my closet or racks of clothing trying to find something to wear. With a few taps in the app, I can plan my outfit in advance and know exactly what to pull out when it’s time to get ready.
8. Sell Unused Clothes with Poshmark
Poshmark is an app that makes it incredibly easy to sell clothes you no longer wear. With Poshmark, you simply take photos of your unused clothes and create listings right from your phone. The app has an enormous community of buyers – over 80 million according to their website. When you list an item, it gets exposed to this huge audience of buyers looking for deals on fashion.
Unlike selling used clothes on your own, Poshmark brings the buyers to you. You don’t have to deal with organizing yard sales, local classified ads, or uploads to auction sites. The app handles everything from marketing to payments and shipping. When an item sells, Poshmark emails you a prepaid shipping label to send to the buyer. Payouts are quick too – you receive your earnings as soon as the buyer confirms receipt of the order. There’s no need to wait for 2-week payout cycles like on other platforms.
Overall, Poshmark streamlines the clothing resale process. Their massive community of buyers gives your closet items incredible exposure. And handling logistics like shipping and payments makes selling clothes almost effortless. If you have a closet full of unused clothes, Poshmark is a great option to turn them into cash quickly.
Overall, technology and apps can greatly help us manage our lives and wellbeing in many ways. Apps like Google Calendar and Mealime provide organization, helping us manage our time and plan meals efficiently. Health and fitness apps like Libra, Fitbit, and ClassPass allow us to track our exercise, weight goals, and overall wellness. And apps like YNAB and Poshmark help us manage our finances and declutter our closets.
By using technology to help keep us accountable in major life areas like time management, health, finances, and more, we can live happier, more organized, and balanced lives. The automated reminders, tracking, and resources these apps provide help take some of the work out of staying on top of everything. Rather than feeling overwhelmed, we can use these apps to make our lives better and use technology to our advantage in maintaining overall life organization and wellbeing.
