Episode 133: Five Health App Recommendations to Help Small Business Owners Who Feel Stressed Out Right Now
Feeling a little stressed right now? Or perhaps, the whole working from home has you sitting for far longer than you’re used to, which can cause sore muscles and back ache. In this quick tip episode, Fiona shares five health app recommendations that have helped her feel better despite the long work-from-home setup. Listen now to find out if one might be right for you.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
5 Health App Recommendations
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Applications Mention
Episode transcript:
Hello, and welcome to Episode 133 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today is a quick tip episode. And I think this one is useful. Whether you run a business, whether you don't, regardless of what age you are, I just think that everyone can get something out of today's episode.
Before I dive into that, two things. One is I've been contacted a few times about people who missed out on their Marketing For Your Small Business course and coaching program. The course Marketing For Your Small Business is available anytime. So you can just go on over to marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. And you can find it and buy it there. And then when we run the coaching program, again, you will actually be offered a massively discounted price to join the next course and coaching program. That's where we run a nine week live coaching program to get you through that course. And to just give you an opportunity to meet other small business owners. So yes, if you're interested in Marketing For Your Small Business, and you missed out on the course and coaching program that's running August till October, don't worry, you can still buy the course and get started on understanding your marketing and creating a strategic plan over at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com.
And the second thing is that I am literally recording this while staring out into this beautiful bush land. It's raining at the moment. I don't know if you can hear that. But yeah, I wanted to just pay my respects to the traditional owners of this land, though are Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and just yeah, pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging and have pledged to work in ways that aid in creating true equality for our First Nations people. So like I said, it is a quick tip episode. So let's get into it, shall we?
Alright, so like I said at the beginning, this is an episode that is really useful for absolutely anyone, not just small businesses, or business owners, I should say. But really, for everybody that's out there, particularly people that are now spending more time working. So it could be that your physical presence or office is closed. And so you have to, you know, temporarily you have to work from home re it could be that you are homeschooling, and you're having to kind of, you know, manage working from home and also being on a computer. Or maybe you're the person being homeschooled, and maybe you're a teenager that is suddenly looking at screens all day not getting that beautiful time to go out at lunchtime and play with your friends and muck about in class and all those good things.
But yeah, I hope that today's episode really gives you a really clear tactic and tool that you could use to help you. So what is it? What am I talking about? I am talking about health apps. So health apps or plugins that you can use that are going to help you and keep you healthy physically, mentally, whilst you are working. So I have worked from home for six years, it's my sixth year. But prior to that, I've always worked in an office job. So I have worked in as a magazine writer, I have worked at, you know, huge online retail is in head office. And predominantly most of my job is spent sitting down, which is really you know, they say sitting is the new smoking and being on screens. So I've always done business coaching over Zoom well before Zoom was a household name. But yeah, and so I've had to look into ways to keep my my mind healthy, but also to keep my body sort of, you know, I know that I've talked about this being a year of health, but small things that I've done throughout my career that have helped me just in terms of like posture and other stuff. So I thought I'd share five apps. Of course there are so many more out there, but five apps that I've used that I found helpful.
So in no particular order:
#1 Posture Minder
And we'll link to all of these in the show notes. But PostureMinder is really about your posture. So the way that you sit at your desk. And what it is, is a kind of Chrome plugin, Chrome being a browser that a lot of people use. And it allows you to set a timer. So you can set a timer for every hour, you could set a timer for every 15 minutes. But basically, it'll kind of go off. And it will remind you to sit up straight, or even get up, walk around, stretch your back out, and then sit back down. So even if you have the most ergonomically amazing chair, chances are if you're sitting most of the time at a desk, and particularly if you're like working from home, and you've kind of got this new setup, so maybe you're sitting at the kitchen table, in which case, the chair may not be that ergonomically suitable for sitting all day, you could be you know, kind of parked in your bedroom, again, in an area that maybe doesn't have as much space as potentially it would have if you were an office or if you were in a shop working from a desk. So PostureMinder is a free tool. And like I said, you can just set a timer, and it will remind you to stretch and look after your posture. So we'll link to that in the show notes. But you can also just Google or put on a kosha or whatever, search engine, PostureMinder, and it'll come up the PostureMinder app, you'll also see probably a whole bunch of other apps that come in as well.
#2 Noizio
There's lots of other tools that do this, this is not the only one, this is a paid app. So you can find other ways to get this. But the point is that noisy Oh is a way of creating kind of ambient noise that is going to keep you focused. So there's also a another tool called focused at will or used to pay for that. Or you can find you know, a lot of these on Spotify as well. But the point with Noizio, is that it's an app that you can set up and you can kind of put in kind of rain or cafe noises or, you know, campfire or kind of a river. And you can sort of set it so that you can be apparently more productive whilst being focused as well. So that's the same with Focused at Will, which is another app that you can use in this sort of same vein. But really, it's about setting yourself up so that orally, you feel really good and productive. And you can focus and I know that especially if you're say in lockdown, or working from an area that is very noisy, so there might be construction happening, you might be just in like a block of flats. And it's kind of noisy, these sorts of things can sort of drown out that background noise and allow you to focus on what it is that you're working on. So that one is Noizio. And of course, we'll link to that in the show notes.
#3 Headspace
So this is really an app, it's been around for a long time. And it's got a library of I think 500 plus meditations on everything from like stress to resilience to compassion. There's also things like sleep sounds and sleep meditation. So if everything that's going on in the world right now is really getting to you. And you're finding that you don't go to sleep very well, or you're kind of getting anxious before sleep, these things can help. But from a work perspective, what I love about headspace and again, it's a paid tool I've been paying for it for a few years, is that it allows you to do like a two minute meditation. So you can have lots of different courses, there's courses you can go through on anxiety, stress, overwhelm, all sorts of things.
But then there's also where you can just get a quick meditation, and you can do it guided. And you can choose the the narrator as well for your guided meditations. And you can set it to like three minutes. And sometimes I will do a quick two, three minute meditation before clients, especially if I've got a really busy day. So Thursdays tend to be back to back to back one on one clients. And so often, I might have half an hour between those sessions. And what I'll do is I'll set this, I'll burn some oil, or I'll put a candle on. And I'll just take a few minutes. Okay, I'm going to be really present for this. So it could be that you have a meeting coming up that you're kind of anxious about. It could be that, you know, just in general, you're finding yourself quite overwhelmed. And so it's just about stopping, getting back to the present, being really mindful, taking that minute. And again, Headspace is the app that I'm mentioning.
But you can find, if you Google UCLA free meditations, there's a bunch there. I think there are about 10 minutes though, or you could literally just google three minute meditation, you could probably find a bunch on YouTube as well, or even Spotify. So again, you don't have to pay but I guess I'm bringing up Headspace because it's a great app and I found it really really useful in my life and in running my business as well.
#4 Time Out
By Dejal and again, if you look up time out app, you should be able to find it and what it is is a break A reminder, I think it only works on Macs. So sorry if you're using a PC, but you could look at something like this for Macs. So you can look up time out app for PCs, sorry, not Mac's. But what it is, is it allows you to kind of customize your breaks. So again, if you're like, Oh my gosh, I'm just not getting up from my desk, I'm not having a break, I'm just working through and it's really full on, and you're suddenly looking up and you haven't had lunch, you haven't gone to the bathroom, that sort of stuff. It allows you to set it for, again, a certain frequency, so that you get up, you take a break, you can set the break for a certain amount of time. And what it will do is that when you are working, it will actually like come over your screen and sort of prevent you.
And you've got to Yeah, just could have either close it down. And hopefully you don't do that you actually take what it is that you've set up and you have a break. And it really is about sort of saying that the human body isn't built to the sit in one position, endless hours, like you're typing on a keyboard. And so it's gently going to remind you to take a break on a regular basis. And like I said, you can set this up. So you can have a normal break, which is typically like 10 minutes every hour. Or you can have a micro break, like a very brief cause of like 15 seconds or, you know, 30 seconds every 15 minutes. Or you can break it out for bigger breaks, like lunchtime or afternoon breaks. And you can configure, like I said, you can configure like, how long they last, and what's the time between the breaks and all of that sort of stuff. And yeah, it's got all these different themes. So you can edit the theme. And you can Yeah, just make it look nice and enjoy it for yourself. So that is the time out, break reminder app.
#5 MoodMission
So mood mission is an evidence based app. And it's designed to kind of empower you to overcome feelings of depression and anxiety by kind of discovering new and like, apparently better ways of coping. Now, this is not taking the place of seeing a psychologist or seeing your GP, I should probably just put that up there as a disclaimer. So this is not, you know, if you are really suffering from depression and anxiety, you need to go and speak to your GP, you need to get into a mental health plan, talk to a psychologist, this is an app a guess, if you feeling that, you know, maybe you've got situational depression in terms of the pandemic and everything else that's going on, or maybe feeling a bit anxious, or maybe you are seeing a psychologist and you could use this in association. But I know a lot of people, a lot of small business owners are feeling a lot of situational depression and kind of anxiety around everything that's happening, the huge uncertainty that we're all dealing with.
And basically, MoodMission kind of gives you a tailored list of five simple, quick, effective, like evidence based missions or kind of activities to improve your mood. And they're all taken from scientific research. And so you kind of download it, you go through kind of questions, and then you get given sort of submissions to do. And so that might be something that if you're working and you're kind of finding yourself even getting a bit anxious about oh my gosh, this is coming up or I'm overwhelmed with work or how am I going to get all these customer orders out or something mood mission app may help you. And you can find out more about that one at moodmission.com. And I think they've got like, I think it's correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's actually founded and run by registered psychologists and founding director of MoodMission. And he's a psychologist in private practice, and has worked in Youth Mental Health. And then they've also got an associate professor, who is a registered psychologist and an internationally recognized expert on interventions to promote emotional well being. So that is Mood Mission. So just to recap those five apps that might help you with your health, overall, physical mental, emotional health is
1. Posture Minder - for good posture,
2. Noizio - for kind of better productivity
3. Headspace - or any kind of app for meditation
4. Time Out - break reminder app
5. MoodMission
And of course, we'll link to all of those in the show notes, as always, and you can find the show notes over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/133. So if any of these health apps sound interesting to you go on over and read the show notes. And if this episode has been useful for you, and you think it could be really useful for a friend or small business colleague or anyone else in your life, please hit the share button. And if you really love it, and you feel like it, I would love it if you could leave a review. It just really, really helps us get found by so many other people across the globe, and maybe one of these health apps could really really help them. So that is it for today's quick tip episode. Thank you so much for your time and I'll see you next Time by
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
