Everyone has been affected in some way by COVID-19. For us, while we didn’t get physically sick, our mental health took a toll those first few weeks, and it took rest and some health and productivity apps to get us feeling healthy again!
We already work from home most of the time, with the exception of photoshoots and weddings. As soon as we heard the news about a lockdown, we pivoted and started working on a digital product for photographers and wedding planners!
But we were working nonstop, including evenings and weekends. After a few weeks, we were drained and irritable, and we wanted to quit.
We took a complete break from work for over a week, and during that time there were two things that we did to bring balance back into our lives.
Chris’s Idea: 5-Hour Workdays
We used to just start work as soon as we woke up and then go until at least dinner, if not well into the evening.
We knew that this way of working was exhausting, but we thought it was necessary.
We didn’t realize it was actually making us LESS productive, because the workday was so long, we couldn’t see the end of it! We spent SO much time on our phones instead of working!
Chris came up with the idea to try working only 5 hours a day, and it has been life-changing!!
Each day, we start work at 10 am with a to-do list for 3-5 things to work on. We take an hour-long lunch break and end our day at 4 pm!
We work more efficiently now (we’re working more focused for fewer hours, so we’re less tempted to go on our phones every 5 seconds), and we have so much more time to do what we want with the rest of our day!
Micaela’s Idea: Health and Productivity Apps
The other thing we did to bring a healthy balance into our lives (and keep us accountable to our new work schedule) was to start keeping track of our habits using productivity apps.
Micaela started by looking for a habit-tracking app, and over the next couple of weeks we both found lots of apps that helped us stay accountable and feel more motivated to have a healthy balance in our lives!
Here are the health and productivity apps that have kept us sane during self-quarantine!
Table of Contents:
Habitica
Habitica is probably our favorite of the productivity apps, because it turns your daily tasks and habits into a game!
As you check off your habits, you’ll gain health and experience points! You’ll also find items and gold which you can use for new armor, pets, and potions. And you can team up with your spouse or friends to battle monsters in quests!
This is an easy and fun way to start or break habits, because you can have either positive or negative effects on the different goals you add. You can also have it send you reminders to do your daily tasks!
This app is free and is the only productivity app we found that doesn’t limit the number of habits for free. It has turned our real-life goals into a fun game that makes us excited to do things like laundry and exercise!
Get it on the App Store | Google Play
FitOn
FitOn is a health productivity app that has hundreds of completely free workout videos! FitOn is the only app we’ve found that allows you to access their entire workout library without upgrading to pro.
There are videos that only last about 3-5 minutes – great for a mid-workday break!
And there are also videos that last anywhere from 5-45 minutes, so you can get a workout in no matter how much time you have each day!
You can also set up a custom workout plan based on your fitness goals and how many days per week you want to exercise!
Micaela LOVES FitOn – she never used to do any sort of exercise beyond walking around during photoshoots and wedding days, but now she is motivated to get in a little bit of activity every single day!!
Get it on the App Store | Google Play
AutoSleep Bundle ($7.99)
AutoSleep, AutoWake, and HeartWatch are the only productivity apps we actually decided to purchase! Unlike the “free” apps that all charge monthly fees to track the most important data, these were a one-time purchase (and since we have family sharing set up in the App Store, we only had to buy it once for the two of us!).
AutoSleep is a sleep productivity app. It tracks your sleep automatically using your fitness watch or how long you go without using your phone, and it gives you tons of stats to show you how well you are sleeping!
AutoWake lets you set up smart alarms such as waking you up when you’re in light sleep, gently buzzing you out of deep sleep using your Apple Watch, or even connecting with your Home Kit so you can have the lights turn off when you’re going to sleep!
HeartWatch tracks everything about your heart rate and move goals. Track your heart rate during a workout, or connect it with AutoSleep to see how it changes while you sleep!
These three apps capture all the data you could ever want to track for sleep, workouts, and heart rate. They send each other data and sync to your Apple Health Kit to do so much we can’t explain it all here! Chris suffers from insomnia, but these productivity apps have motivated him to have healthier habits that have really improved his sleep.
Get it on the App Store!
Whereby
Whereby is a free website and app for video calls! We prefer it to Zoom because you don’t need to download an app or make an account in order to use it – you can just open it in your browser! But it does have a mobile app that in our opinion is way easier to use than Zoom!
You can set up a permanent room/url for free, and can have up to four accounts in the room at a time! You can then upgrade if you want to have more people join at a time – but we haven’t needed to so far. There are no time limits on how long you can use the room, either!
Whereby has helped us to keep in contact with our friends and family during this time, which helps with our mental health! We also count it as one of our favorite productivity apps because we use it for meetings with our wedding clients as well!
Get it on the App Store | Google Play | Desktop
Duolingo
Duolingo is a free app that makes a game out of language-learning.
You can learn anything from real languages like German and French, to Latin, to created and fictional languages like Esperanto, Klingon, or High Valyrian (seriously!!!)!
Micaela loves learning languages because it gives her little goals to work towards that make her feel happy, productive, and connected to others! It’s not for everyone (Chris isn’t as excited about languages), but this is one app that really helped her mental health during quarantine!
Get it on the App Store | Google Play
BONUS: RENPHO Scale
The RENPHO scale is actually a scale that connects to its own weight tracking app! We wanted an affordable scale that would help us keep track of our health goals, and this one only cost us $15!
Multiple users can track their weight on the scale, which syncs to the RENPHO app as well as the Health Kit and all our other fitness tracking apps! We love it!
Get it on Amazon / Get the app on the App Store | Google Play
What are your favorite health and productivity apps?
Let us know what apps we should check out in the comments below!
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May 5, 2020
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