Since the pandemic led to a remote work revolution in many industries across the globe, people everywhere have struggled to achieve the ideal work-life balance. Luckily, there’s an ever-increasing number of apps to help you with work-life balance, without adding to your to-do list in the process.
Work-Life Balance a Common Pain Point for Employees
Recognizing work-life balance as a common pain point among herself and her co-workers, HR leader Adriana Cisneros Basulto decided to leave her corporate job to launch a new platform that would help people unplug from work, increase wellbeing and ultimately boost productivity.
The platform, Maxwell, is designed as a way for employers to provide additional perks like gym memberships, transportation, or healthy meal delivery services to their teams in addition to their regular benefits plans to promote wellness and show their appreciation.
As someone who has personally struggled with work/life balance during her career, Cisneros Basulto understands the value of helping employees achieve the right blend of personal and career-oriented activities each day.
“This has been a passion of mine for a long time, and it’s very interesting to live in a world now where we all happen to be struggling with it more than ever,” she says.
Work Hours Continue to Rise in North America
While Europeans have decreased their work hours by about 30% over the past half century, American work hours have steadily increased. It’s clear that work-life balance continues to be a challenge.
Basulto says removing unnecessary tasks from your plate can go a long way in freeing up time during your day to spend with loved ones or improving your wellbeing.
Work-life balance apps can help you find that sweet spot, and once you do, your life will be streamlined in a way you never could have imagined — and it will be oh, so sweet. To help you, we’ve rounded up four apps to help you manage your mood, time, workload and more.
4 Apps That Will Help You With Work-Life Balance
1. Bloom App
Using a powerful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy based approach, Bloom can help you achieve better mental health without sacrificing too much precious time out of your already hectic schedule. The app can help you track your moods, challenge negative thought patterns and retrain your brain by reminding you to take small breaks throughout your day to meditate, breathe or just take a break from your device.
Founded by Leon Mueller, the app was created in response to the need for more accessible, affordable therapy options for people who are struggling to manage all of life’s daily demands and stay sane in the process (read: everyone).
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2. Todoist
With 25 million users and counting, Todoist is a tried-and-true productivity app designed to make your life feel a little bit more manageable (and who doesn’t want that?). The app has been perfected over 13 years by founder Amir Salihefendić, who can personally attest to its ability to help you decrease stress, achieve goals and manage a heavy workload.
3. Asana
Created by former Facebook employees Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein, Asana is a comprehensive app and platform designed to manage workloads, delegate tasks, schedule projects and more. Although it may sound overwhelming, once you start using Asana, it’ll be hard to imagine your life before it.
During their time at Facebook, engineers Moskovitz and Rosenstein were tasked with improving employee productivity, which ultimately led them to create the program. Today, Asana is worth billions of dollars as it’s simplified the lives of busy managers everywhere.
4. Evernote
Great note-taking is an important skill to learn no matter what industry or space you’re operating in. Founded by software developer Stepan Pachikov, who also founded ParaGraph Intl. and Parascript and contributed to the development of handwriting recognition technology, Evernote is a platform that specializes in helping you take incredible notes. Through multiple handy features, the platform can help employees keep track of projects and stay organized through features like a web clipper, templates, calendars and much more.
Finding Work-Life Balance
Overall, Cisneros Basulto recommends doing some reflecting to determine the things in life that truly bring you joy each day. Then, it simply comes down to finding a way to do these things more often.
“The biggest advice I can give anyone is to think of what work-life balance means to you and try to imagine what the perfect circumstance would look like. Then, strive towards that,” she says. “What are the key aspects of life that make you happy and give you joy? Find a way to make it happen and let go of fact that it might not happen every day at the same time.”
For more mental wellness tips for the workplace, learn how to recognize work burnout symptoms and how to recover; find out more about imposter syndrome and how to treat it; and here are four wellness apps that will help you feel your best in 2022.
