Leveraging tech for mental health

The advent of technology has prompted us to design a world characterized by easy and convenient access to what we want and need. Luckily, with the rise of mobile and web-based platforms, digital mental health has been growing in today’s tech scene. Here are some apps that have helped the Calm Collective team navigate our mental health journeys that we would like to share with you!

For focus and productivity

1. ReachOut WorryTime
   Daily anxieties disrupt our quality of work and overall outlook towards life. ReachOut WorryTime allows you to write down and schedule deliberate time for these worries. While admittedly difficult to postpone bothersome thoughts, one way to help cultivate the habit is to schedule your worries at the same time every day!

2. Forest

   Utilizing the famous Pomodoro technique, Forest encourages you to break down tasks into certain time intervals for maximum productivity. By spending time off your phone to focus on work, you get to grow virtual trees and earn coins that will be converted by Forest to grow actual trees. This is a great way to cut screen time, get things done while maintaining healthy breaks, and help the environment in the process.

3. Mindful Browsing
   Our browsers, just like our brains, often have too many tabs open. MindfulBrowsing allows you to identify sites that can potentially get you in an endless scrolling adventure and keep you from surfing the net aimlessly when you could be getting things done. While the sites are not blocked completely, once you attempt to log in, you get a prompt to reconsider if you’d like to visit the site or do something else instead. Apart from this gentle nudge, the pretty landscape photos used as backdrops may help stall the temptation as well!

For cultivating mindfulness and meditation

1. Insight Timer 

   Insight Timer has a roster of free guided meditation, including themed ones for several purposes like sleep and anxiety, and even for specific audiences, such as parents and kids. The diversity makes it great for however you want to cultivate your mindfulness journey. 

2. Headspace
   With great visuals and simple animations, Headspace is definitely one to pique the interest of beginners. The basic starter pack cultivates a strong foundation for mindfulness practice for all meditators. For more free content, Headspace also has quick reflections on their Spotify podcast and much more assorted content on their YouTube channel.

3. MindFi
   Specifically designed for busy people, MindFi aims to incorporate meditation in your daily routine through bite-sized exercises. This provides a refreshing take on meditation -- eyes open, anywhere, anytime. MindFi also has an enterprise solution, providing employees with access to audio and video courses and mindfulness exercises.
    

For managing your mental health journey

1. Intellect
   Employing the concept of behavioural therapy, Intellect aims to cultivate your mental health journey as a reflective, learning, and habit-building process. One key feature would be the “learning paths'' that span across topics like anxiety, procrastination, and self-esteem. Additionally, Intellect’s enterprise solution couples self-care programs with behavioural coaches and crisis support, providing accessible and curated solutions. 

2. Happify
   As the name suggests, Happify trains your brain to choose joy. This app offers a gamified approach to inject positive psychology in several aspects of life such as family, personal growth, work, and many more tracks you can choose from. The games and activities are designed to nudge you towards the more positive options, for you to ultimately arrive at a more optimistic and hopeful frame of mind.

3. Fabulous
   Another app built around behavioural science is Fabulous, which encourages you to incorporate self-care into your daily routine. The app helps structure your life by building good habits for nutrition, sleep, and even focus at work. The personalized questions upon starting the journey allow for the configuration of a plan suited to meet your goals to become your own version of ‘fabulous.’

It’s definitely easy for technology to harbour addiction, but know that we can also reframe and leverage technology to make it work for us and our mental health journeys. With all of these apps and more, we hope you are able to find what works for you in the ever-growing digital space!