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Whether it’s a laptop, iPad
or smartphone: the modern day human is addicted to gadgets. More and more
people are pointing out the negative effects that these devices bring with them
and the topic of smartphones in particular is becoming more sensitive. While
there are a 1000 ways of using your smartphone for good, there are 1000 ways of
using your smartphone for evil (by evil I don’t mean programming the downfall
of the human race, I’m referring to playing mindless games).
Whether you want to hack your
sleep, forge new habits or boost your brainpower: your smartphone can do that
and more. Here’s a list of my top 4
favourite apps that you can download straight to your device:
1. Sleep Cycle App
This is hands-down the best tool you’ll find if you want to monitor your sleep. The app measures the sleep phases your body goes through and compresses the nights result in a graph. Based off of that the sleep cycle app will provide you with the quality of your sleep in percentage.
But how do you make use of
this information? Tracking your biology for the sake of tracking is a waste of
time. This is where the “sleep notes” come in handy: every night you can take
note of things that you did or that happened throughout the day, which could
impact your sleep (e.g. drank coffee, worked out, took magnesium). The app
stores this information and shows it to you, allowing you then to now which
different activities impact your sleep.
This information helps you to
optimize everything from your nutrition to your pre-bed rituals.
Believe it or not, the
tracking function is merely a side function of the apps actual purpose: waking
you up in your lightest sleep phase in the morning so that you’re full of
energy. Instead of setting the alarm for an exact time, the sleep cycle app
allows you to set your alarm in a time range.
This means that the app wakes you up between, for example, 6:00 and 6:30 AM.
The alarm goes off when you’re in a light sleep phase, waking you when you’re naturally
closer to doing so anyway.
I consider this app a must
for anyone who’s interested in waking up full of energy and/or optimizing his
or her sleep.
2. Lumosity
If you’ve read my blog post “How To Become Smarter: Enhancing Intelligence And Boosting Brainpower” then you’re already familiar what Lumosity is. In sum: Lumosity is a research backed brain trainer, which is designed to improve all aspects of your brains function (speed, problem solving etc.).
You can sign up for free and
upgrade to full membership anytime you want. Full membership offers more games
and additional options such as comparing your LPI (Lumosity Performance Index)
to that of people in your age category. Every day Lumosity sets up a training
program of 3-5 games, which have been chosen for you based off of your brains
strengths and weaknesses.
There’s no reason why you
shouldn’t download the free app and give your noggin some work.
3. HRV4Training
Tracking your heart rate
variability has taken the health and fitness community by storm. Heart rate
variability is the variation in time between your heartbeats. This relies on
two things: your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
The parasympathetic nervous system kicks in when your body is in a
relaxed state. It promotes a slower respiratory system, as well as investing
more energy into digestion and sexual arousal.
On top of that, the
parasympathetic nervous system slows down your heartbeat and primes your body
to react to its environment. If you’re in a relaxed and recovered state, your
heartbeat will show its reaction to your environment by making micro changes in
the time between each individual heartbeat. Therefore, high heart rate
variability means that your body is in a prime, stress durable state.
The sympathetic nervous system is the counter to the parasympathetic
nervous system: it is responsible for your “fight or flight” instinct. The
sympathetic nervous system kicks in when your body detects danger in your
environment. It prepares you to either face the challenge or flee (hence the
term “fight or flight response”). In both cases the sympathetic nervous system
will increase your bodies blood pressure, slow down your digestive system,
increase sweating etc. and decrease your heart rate variability (due to your
body not making micro adjustments as a response to the changes in your
environment).
As you can tell, the
sympathetic nervous system has its uses- when you’re about to get robbed for
example. But many people develop chronic stress or are overtraining in today’s
world, thus increasing the dominance of the sympathetic nervous system.
Chronic stress (mental or
physical) is bad for our health. Yet by knowing that stress decreases your
heart rate variability, we can use technology to find out if our body is
stressed or not. This can be very useful for athletes and high paced
individuals, as they can use technology to find out if their body is truly
overworked or not.
Until recently, detecting
your heart rate variability required a heart rate monitor and an app on your
phone. Nowadays however, you only need an app on your phone. Whilst the heart
rate monitor variant may still be superior, one can get good feedback from a
smartphone as well. The app that I use to measure my heart rate variability is
called HRV4Training. It’s a good, reliable app that only costs a few dollars to
use. The information you receive when measuring your heart rate using the
cameras lens is broken down is such a way that you can easily see in which
direction your going to: primed versus overworked. Based on your measurements
of the past few days, the app will tell you if you should work out that day or
take a rest.
HR4Training is a great tool
to optimize your training, by giving you reliable data on your bodies state.
4. Lift
Habits can either be a
guiding force that keeps you doing something well in life, or a hurdle that one
must overcome in order to achieve a goal. A good habit can be your best friend;
a bad one can be your worst enemy. To be successful, you’ll want as many habits
as possible working for you.
To ensure this, you can use
the Lift app. The Lift app is a habit-forming tool, which is
used to keep you accountable as you’re forging your new habits. It’s set up so
you can support people (and therefore will receive support too) and give them
advice on different ambitions.
You can set up a Lift account
for free and start building new habits in this instant!
Any praise, criticism or
something you’d like to add? Then please comment below!
