5 apps that keep me sane in our current nightmare world

Summary

Today’s world is filled with uncertainties, information overload, and many other stressors.
To stay sane and level-headed, I focus on the essentials: hydration, movement, rest, and diet.
These 5 iPhone apps help me stay on track, while holding me accountable in the process.

It’s no secret that our modern world is saturated with environmental stressors. For as helpful as technology is, screen ubiquity has created a number of problems: information overload, blue light abundance, overstimulation, and reduced attention spans, to name just a few.

Personally, I find it important to stay on track with my health in order to remain grounded and sane in today’s fast-paced environment. I focus on the essentials, which include factors such as proper hydration, adequate exercise, plenty of rest, necessary downtime, and a balanced diet.

Thankfully, there are a great number of excellent apps out there that can make it easier to hold yourself accountable and to develop appropriate habits. Here are 5 iPhone apps that help me stay on track with my own goals and wellness routines. Each of these entries is free to download and install for basic use, but requires a paid subscription to unlock additional functionality and features.

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1 Steps – Activity Tracker

Clear your mind by aiming for 10,000 steps per day

Steps – Activity Tracker

Steps – Activity Tracker is a clean and simple iPhone app that makes it easy to track your daily steps, distance walked, stairs climbed, and more.

One of the best ways to clear your mind of stressors is to get outside and start moving. You don’t need to run a marathon, either — by simply increasing your daily step count by walking around the block a few times, you can improve your overall fitness while getting some fresh air and sunlight in the process. This can help regulate your sleep cycle, your mood, your appetite, and more.

Steps – Activity Tracker is by far my favorite pedometer app for the iPhone. Sure, you can use Apple’s default Fitness app to view your step metrics, but I prefer the clean and purpose-built implementation that the Steps app provides. It’s the small touches that count: interface colors change as you take more steps throughout the day, Apple Health and Apple Watch integrations are appreciated, and lock screen widgets make for a highly glanceable experience.

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2 Quit Coffee – My Decaf Life

Too much caffeine can lead to jitters and sleep distubances

Quit Coffee – My Decaf Life

Quit Coffee – My Decaf Life is an iPhone app that makes it easy to track your daily caffeine intake, and to mark milestones in your caffeine consumption reduction journey.

Who doesn’t love a fresh cup of Joe to kick-start the morning? While caffeine can be a powerful productivity booster, too much of it can spell disaster for your wellness. Coffee, tea, energy drinks, and other caffeinated beverages have a relatively long half-life, which means that brewing another pick-me-up at 3pm probably isn’t the best idea. Too much of the stuff can result in sleep loss, jitters, anxiety, and elevated caffeine tolerance.

Personally, I use My Decaf Life to keep my coffee intake in check. The app can create a personalized ‘taper off plan’ to help you wean off your caffeine dependency, and the main screen displays a sobriety countdown, money-saved metrics, milestone monitoring, insightful blurbs of information, and more.

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3 My Water: Daily Drink Tracker

Stay hydrated by drinking 8 glasses of water per day

My Water: Daily Drink Tracker

My Water: Daily Drink Tracker is an iPhone app that helps remind you to consume water at regular intervals, track your hydration levels, and calculate personal water requirements.

Hydration is far more important than many people realize — aside from quenching your thirst, it’s essential for maintaining skin elasticity, reducing breakouts, mitigating headaches, regulating internal body processes, and much more. Our bodies are made up of approximately 60 percent water by adulthood, which is as good an indication as any that staying hydrated is essential for wellness.

Unfortunately, I often forget to drink enough water throughout the day, which is why I rely on the My Water: Daily Drink Tracker app for iPhone. The app calculates your personal intake requirements, which can vary based on age, sex, height, and weight, and it can push out reminders to keep you on top of your consumption. Statistics are laid out in a useful graph view, there are water-related tips and tricks sprinkled throughout the interface, and Apple Health integration is built-in to the experience.

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4 BetterSleep: Relax and Sleep

Prioritize your nightly 8 hours of shut eye

BetterSleep: Relax and Sleep

BetterSleep: Relax and Sleep is an iPhone app that aims to help you achieve quality sleep, with its sleep tracking, sleep sounds, and much more.

In today’s fast-paced work environments, many of us sacrifice sleep in order to maximize our productivity gains. Unfortunately, forgoing sleep is generally a bad idea — it can lead to irritability, daytime sleepiness, reduced cognitive function, and a general feeling of malaise. More importantly, missing out on rest can be dangerous: it increases the likelihood of motor vehicle accidents and can lead to consequential workplace mistakes.

I rely on the BetterSleep app to help me stay on top of my sleep habits. The app is chock-full of relaxing sleep sounds, musical tracks, and naturescapes. The entire app’s interface is laser-focused on fostering a calming and sleep-inducing state of mind, and the built-in sleep tracker can help you determine not only the quantity, but also the quality of your nightly shut-eye.

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5 Awesome Habits: Habit Tracker

Hold yourself accountable as you reduce screen time, eat healthier, and meditate

Awesome Habits: Habit Tracker

Awesome Habits: Habit Tracker is a streamlined habit and goal tracker app for the iPhone that offers progress tracking, statistics, notification reminders, and more.

It can be rather challenging to set personal goals and to stick with them, and this is doubly true in today’s distraction-filled digital era. Doomscrolling, short-form video content browsing, and dopamine-spouting video game sessions can all make it difficult to concentrate on creating a wellness plan. Thankfully, there are a number of apps out there that can help you maintain accountability, achieve your personal goals, and develop long-lasting healthy habits.

Awesome Habits: Habit Tracker is my personal favorite general-purpose habit-tracking application for the iPhone. I find most competing apps to be needlessly complex, cramming too many tools and features within a limited space. Awesome Habits, by contrast, makes it easy to build out custom habits via its clean and easy-to-understand interface. You can also pick from numerous default options, such as ‘eat vegetables,’ ‘reduce social media,’ ‘meditate,’ ‘read,’ ‘plan my day,’ and more.