I recently discovered that eating late was affecting my sleep negatively. You’re thinking, “I could have told you that. Everyone knows that.” I had heard it too but I wasn’t convinced, until I used a simple app which showed me what was happening.
Though technology has its drawbacks, and can tend to overcrowd our lives with information and distraction, there are a lot of upsides as well. I this post I have some tips for using technology to hack your personal growth and self-care.
In this Video:
00:20 – Six Apps I Use Personally
00:35 – Quality Sleep Increases Cognitive Ability
01:30 – When You Need to Quickly Relax or Concentrate
02:15 – The Personal Assistant of the App World
03:28 – When Good Music is Just What the Doctor Ordered
03:55 – Give Your Brain a Break, Try This
04:45 – Find All Your Favorite Bloggers in Just One Spot
05:30 – Quote from Thomas Jefferson
05:43 – Affirmation to Help You Move Forward
Listen To The Audio:
Watch The Video:
Transcription
I am going to do something exciting today. I am going to give you six apps that you can use for personal development.
I know that if you are here it is because you are interested in personal development.
You want to be able to get the most out of life and these tools are just somethings that can give you that edge and assist you in the commitments that you make, making the decisions that you want to make or getting the information that you need.
Now, they are not in any particular order and here they are.
[shareable cite=”Abe Stone”]I use these six helpful apps to support my personal growth.[/shareable]
Sleep Cycle
Now the first one is a sleep app. It is called a Sleep Cycle and I will give you a link on this post so that you can know exactly what it is.
Now, the reason that I chose this is because sleep is a very important part of our lives. A good night rest wakes you up with energy in the morning, 7 to 8 hours of good sleep increases our cognitive ability by 20 percent, it is said, and this is backed by science.
So obviously sleep is something that we really want to use for our personal development and growth.
Now, one thing that I like about using this app is that it lets you know what things are influencing your sleep, if you are able to enter different factors.
For example, if you ate late and maybe you had coffee or whatever it is, you know “This has a bad influence on my your sleep and the quality of my sleep is going down when this happens.”
Or, “Certain days of the week, sleep better. Well, what is it? How can I improve the other days?”
Anyway, being able to have that information is just another way to improve the quality of your sleep.
Relax Melodies
Another one is called Relax Melodies. I got it from Jeff Walker.
What I really like and what I use it most for is, not so much for relaxing, but for concentration. Sometimes I am in a situation which is really busy and it is distracting.
It uses what I think are called, binaural beats. They are some for relaxing. There are different noises, white noise, just sounds that relax us, the sounds of the water, the sound of the wind, whatever the case is.
You can find great ways to use this app by increasing your concentration or speeding up your ability to relax and disconnect from situations so you can move on to the next event the next thing that you need to do.
If This Then That
Now the next one is called IFTT, again the link is here so you can find it.
What is really good about this is that it connects a multitude of apps, gathering information from all kinds of places.
One of the ways that I like use it is to give me reminders about specific things with my goal and events in my day so, every morning at 8:00 it reminds be, what is some work that I’m going to do that is going to move me towards my goal.
Something that I recently started using it for is for my affirmations or my incantations or whatever it is that you like to call it, my power statements.
The way that I use it is that I simply put my affirmation or my statement there, my declaration if you will. It puts my declaration up 5 key times in my day – in the morning, in the evening as well as around my meal times.
I get it there, I see it, and I say it. You might think that you can just do this on a timer on your device but try this app because it is amazing way it connects.
It can connect to your SMS, it can connect to your reminders, to your notifications, all kinds of places. I think you will find it very helpful.
Spotify
Now the next one is a music app. I love my music app, it is called Spotify. You have probably heard about it, it is very good.
I like the way it organizes music and I can find this that I can share it with friends, so for me it is really fun.
The thing about music is that music has so much power to either give us energy or to help us relax or just change our mood or whatever it is that we need. And by being able to access great music on the spot, on demand, and use it in your life is a wonderful tool.
Evernote
Now, this one is a productivity tool and I am not talking so much here about productivity in business and work, at this moment.
I am talking about personal growth and personal development tools.
Evernote is an amazing way to organize lists, organize information, to make sure that you are not forgetting or losing something, to keep track of ideas, because it is ubiquitous.
It is everywhere, you can have it on your Mac, you can have it on your phone, you can have it on in Android, you can just go on the web and use it at an internet cafe, if you are in a situation where you need to access it like that.
I put it together with the Getting Things Done guy David Allen. I use his methodology for keeping track of information and it is a really is helpful.
It’s a really powerful tool and it’s is great for sorting things, finding things, finding information and it takes away that stress of having to remember “Where did I put this note, where did I put that note?”
You are then able to be a lot more calm and productive in your life.
Feedly
Now the last one is a great way of keeping track of all those sources of information where you are growing. Maybe you are learning more about the mind, learning more about setting goals.
Maybe you just want quotes and updates from a blogger who posts great posts on success or maybe you have another blogger that is helping you with parenting.
All this information for our personal growth is very important to keep track of.
One way that you can keep track of it is in a great app called Feedly.
It is available on all your devices. It aggregates and brings it together. You can bring together several hundreds of websites and you can share it with friends and you can put it in evernote and other places.
It is a great tool for keeping that information for personal growth flowing in your life.
There you go! Six great apps that you can use in your personal growth. Enjoy them!
The quote for the day is:
[shareable cite=”Thomas Jefferson”]If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done before.[/shareable]The affirmation for the day is:
[shareable cite=”Abe Stone”]Constantly improving in every area of my life is something I just do naturally. #affirmation[/shareable]
