Be Smarter Than Your Smartphones With These 5 Apps
By: The Essentialist
Tags: Life Lessons, Productivity, Time Management, Smartphones, Addiction

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21st Century is a digital book. We are witnessing arguably the greatest revolution in the history of mankind. Digitalization can be defined as the shift from having everything on paper to everything in binary. In simpler terms, we are being lazy, and we are becoming comfortable with it. There was literally a time when people need to stand in a queue to pay bills, for registration of passports or to file VISA application. Now it is within your fingertips, inside your pockets, and the best part, 24*7 available. And while I must agree, these innovations made life easy, it is consequently pushing us toward a gradual tendency to get everything served to us, to be dependable.

For the people living and surviving in this generation, Smartphones are Essential. I mean, who wants to carry a separate cellular phone, a camera, a notepad, a watch, a calculator, a map, a hypothetical book that carry all the information of this world and still feel left out because, oh shit! there is no way to connect to the most important tool of this generation, The Social Media. There you have it, this is the essence of a smartphone. It is an inevitable part of our lives, and rightly so because it made our lives better, easy and added value of it. But nothing can deny the fact that abundance of anything leads to, well Garbage. And most of the time we spend with our smartphone is not for doing something ‘Essential’. Matter of fact, most of us might use this smartphone to look for What is Essential for us?

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

Ask this yourself? How much time in the entire day do you use the smartphone for only the purposes it serve? When was the last time you ignored the mobile notification and focused on whatever you were doing?

Smartphones are made to be addictive. In comparison to the functions that the hardware can perform, the capability of Software a.k.a Mobile Applications is 100x more. And Yes, they are made to keep you hooked. Millions of engineers are being paid so that they can serve you constantly what you want to see and keep your eyes in front of the screen as long as they want.

Smartphone offers a whole plethora of applications, for every need. Want to have the lyrics of a song, done. Want to use iOS inside an android phone or vice versa, done. Want an application to revert all these changes, done. Want to meet new people, or meet the same person over and over again, you will find it preinstalled. The universe of mobile applications is no less than this universe we live in. And this left us with so many options for getting even a simple task done.

Having said this, there is a quintessential need to be smarter than your Smartphones. Coming to your rescue, here are the few apps, all free and I use them all, that will help you declutter, improve productivity and save the unnecessary effort to looking for a needle inside a heap of sand. Here are your magnets:

1. Google Tasks

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Simple, clean, minimal. Often under the new excitement of making your life productive, you find yourself spending most of the time looking, reading reviews and checking every app. Well, that’s not very productive. The whole purpose of having our tasks written at one place and the idea of creating small goals is lost in this practice.

Google task offers to add, well the tasks, short term or long term, with various category, labels and you can also add multiple accounts. You can add tasks within tasks and can switch between different labels directly. It allows you to add details about the subject and directly synchronise your Google calendar regarding the task or any event.

Warning: The app is not capable enough to do the tasks for you.

2. Daywise

Notifications can be annoying. There are some applications which constantly sends unnecessary alerts. The worst part, you can not completely disable your app since you want to access the important notification as well and there is no way to filter. Also, you don’t need your social life notified while you are working and business emails while you are having dinner with family.

Daywise got you covered. You can schedule your notifications at a certain time of the day, filter apps you need instant notification for, batch all the other application whose alerts you want to see at the end of the day. It vibrates whenever an alert pops up, but keep your notification area clear since this is the place that distracts you. Plus it monitors your smartphone use, how much time you spend on each application and complete analytics of your smartphone time. Subtly, it makes you conscious of your smartphone habits, something you need to monitor and improve regularly.

Fun fact: It is an award-winning productivity app.

3. Habits

Your habits are your life. And to monitor them is a subtle way to introspect. Marcus Aurelius said you will be unhappy as long as you look inside everyone instead of yourself. Habit is a reflection of your behaviour, your character, and your success too. The consciousness of your habit is an opportunity to confront, to challenge, for a change, something you must.

Habits offer a clean and simple interface and serve just one purpose, to be your constant companion in having a bird’s eye view of your daily routine. You can create a complete list of the habits you want to, give them custom colours for identification, add the details you want to add, set the time of the day you want to be reminded. Moreover, it gives the analysis from the day mentioned the habits, the graph of your consistency, a record of the best steak. You can start good habits, quit bad ones with this one app.

A Caveat, the app is not that advance to start habit for you. At the end of the day, it is you who will open the app, check the habits you practised.

4. Google Keep

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Even found yourself in a situation where a great idea struck you and as you decide to continue your in hand task, you no longer remember it in the near future. I guess that unites us as human beings. Having a constant companion where we can deliberately write what we want in a completely unhindered way, Google Keep, if you use it wisely can be the most useful application. I personally write my ideas, quotes, my financial expenditures, some reminders, list of books and list of movies I should see next. Now, you can not keep your notepad with you all the time, but that’s not the case with your smartphone.

With Google’s signature minimal interface, it is packed with tonnes of features. Custom colours for identifying the different types of notes, you can add images, voices, checklists, manual writings and personalised images and notes as well. You can create unique labels and set a reminder directly. Bonus: All these google apps are directly linked to your account, so even if you are switching between different devices, or accessing multiple accounts within the same device, you will found connected to the ecosystem.

5. Google books

Reading is the best thing you can do for your mind. No better way to put this. And a reader finds peace in reading. Now as I mentioned earlier, you will find more reasons (a.k.a excuses) to not carry a book, but there are no reasons to stay away from your phones, are they? Being a reader myself, I found great value from this native application. Yes, it is in your device right now, you just didn’t saw it yet.

You can purchase from tonnes of books available in the library. Some of them are absolutely free, so that is amazing. But the cool part is, you can download books from external third party sources and can still open them in Google books, it will run in the same format and animated as any purchased book. The highlight is the 3D animation, which comes when you turn the pages. It gives you the feel of reading a real book. You can choose different background colours, text size, search for meanings directly, even if you are offline. It even offers an additional feature of opening your pdf document and you still have the same features as you have with a book.

6. Interval Timer

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There are times when you are performing a task in which you constantly wanted to be reminded. It can be preparations for your SATs, Sports training, recording your progress in a 100m lap, if you are aiming to create a Guinness Book Record or simply, a home-based workout.

‘Workout’ is an integral part of my daily routine. And Interval timer is the app that completely transformed my this habit. Prioritizing your health is itself a rare thing, and during these unprecedented times, it often comes with time constrain. Having the resource to follow a strict time-bound exercise routine makes it easier to stick in the longer run.

The interface is simple, just one page, for one purpose. It gives a beep after completion of every set and a buzzer when the task is over.

GET READY. WORK IT