Apps and Programs That Make Life Easier

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All innovations and technology are designed to make life easier. From the invention of fire (to make it easier not to freeze to death) to the invention of social media (to make it easier to stay in contact with friends and relatives), the goal of humanity is to get the most reward from the least amount of work. There are many fields that have benefited from a hard-working minority allowing the majority to take it a little easier. You may have already read about how technology has improved workplace safety. But now you can find out about how technology has made it easier for everyone to get through their day to day living with a little less drain on their cognitive capabilities, leaving more energy to inject into those pursuits that will have the most benefit. Below are a few aspects of life that have benefited from a handful of people putting in the legwork so that the rest of the world can get on with doing what they love.

Running a business

Advances in technology mean it has never been easier to become your own boss and start a business. The internet has allowed even small, startup companies to operate internationally within a very short period. Once upon a time, you would need an idea, a business plan, a budget, predicted turnover, and a whole list of other things before you could even get somebody to invest in your business proposition. Now, however, it’s quite easy to set up by yourself and start trading straight away. All you have to do is take a look at the selection of apps that will help you to establish a website in a matter of minutes, do some marketing, run some search engine optimization (SEO) and you could have an established business turning a profit in a matter of days. There is even a growing market in small business automation, meaning that you can spend less time at your desk, and more time enjoying all that money you’ll be making.

Staying healthy

Sometimes it seems like you need a degree in nutrition or sports science to be able to keep track of a healthy lifestyle. Just picking a workout routine can seem like a minefield of information telling you that their way is the only way. And that’s not to mention the vast quantities of information about daily calorie intake, macronutrients, micronutrients, and the pros and cons of all the fad diets you’ve heard about. Technology to the rescue again. There are hundreds of apps designed to help you reach your goals without spending every waking hour working out how many grams of fat are in a chicken breast. Simply type in your height, weight and age, including your goal weight (you may want to shed some fat or build muscle) and the app will tell you how many calories you should be eating to achieve that. Couple that with the ability to create a food diary that does that math for you, you’ll find it easier than ever to keep track of how much, or little, you’ve been eating. There are also plenty of apps to accommodate your chosen method of exercising. Running, cycling, weight lifting, or circuit training. All have dedicated apps which will allow you to track your progress and help keep you motivated.

Investing

Gone are the days where financial advice for those wishing to invest in the stock market is reserved for the big players. Choosing where to invest is a simple matter of calculating risk and gain, along with factoring in budget and timescale. All of these things can easily be done by a computer (even the big financial advisors use computer programs to help serve their customers), and at a fraction of the cost that a human advisor would charge; meaning more money in your pocket to put towards your investments. Some of these robo-advisors have a minimum portfolio amount and others don’t, so it’s a good idea to research all the available options before you settle which provider you want to utilize.

Learning an instrument

You may have had dreams of being a rockstar or concert pianist as a child, but just never got around to actually putting in the practice. Now you’re older and can’t afford the additional cost of lessons, let alone find the time to travel across town for an hour-long lesson. As the saying goes: “There’s an app for that.” Practically any instrument you could think of has a huge number of apps to choose from that will instruct you from the very basics through to professional standards of playing. You will need to factor in the cost of the instrument to physically practice on, but the weekly cost of lessons, as well as the cost in your time to travel to said lessons, will have disappeared. So you can arrive home in the evening, kick your shoes off, and practice for half an hour while your dinner is cooking in the oven. Simple.

Learning a language

As we all know, the best way to learn a new language is to immerse yourself in it. Want to learn French? Live in France for a while; you’ll either pick it up or have to suffer the sighs and pitying looks of the locals as they mistake you for one of the tourists. You could take an evening class or private tuition, but that has the same shortcomings as paying to learn an instrument. Whether you just want to be able to talk conversationally, or you want to be able to operate in a professional capacity, there will be plenty of apps you can download (some for free) that will have you talking like a native in no time. The benefit of using an app instead of private lessons is that you can do ten or twenty minutes a day, which is easy to commit to, rather than consolidating it all into a one-hour session that can leave your brain feeling frazzled.

Hopefully, these ideas have given you something to think about, and showed you that whatever way you want to make your life a little bit easier, there’s a way for technology to help.

Tom Parillo

I am interested in all things technology, especially automation, robotics and tech that helps change how society will live in the future.