We all know the feeling. Spend all day at work thinking about that planned gym trip this evening – how for 30 precious minutes, you’ll stairmaster, swim, cycle or lift your way to a well-earned respite from the daily grind. You remind yourself that work is not the only source of fulfillment in life – that your body deserves the same attention. Staring at your keyboard, you imagine the bliss of entering into an anaerobic state, where everything is beautiful and nothing is scary, where the veritable mountains that life throws your way can be scaled with energy left to spare.
Yet when you actually get home, you find that the TV has been turned on. Did you do that? No no, you couldn’t have. And yet now you’re sitting down, gradually muting the protests of the elliptical fiend in your head. Your workday was strenuous enough as is – why make it more taxing? Wouldn’t it be borderline masochistic to work out at this point? You have your sanity to consider. Another evening of relaxation isn’t going to hurt anyone. You let the television lull you into a state of utter complacency, and soon you are asleep.
The problem for us businesspeople is that this kind of day is not an isolated occurrence. All too often we find ourselves sacrificing physical wellness for career advancement. Sure, we may have mastered a unified communications strategy at work, but within our cerebral pathways that communication has been stunted. It’s not our fault – we’re overburdened! When we work like dogs, we act like dogs: submissive to a process we don’t seek to change. We need to reassert control over our lives. This can be a difficult feat amid the fervor of the workplace, but fortunately some apps exist to help us out:
1. OmniFocus Task Manager: This app is so much more than a calendar – it’s like a secretary on your phone screen. It allows you to quickly record tasks to do as well as ideas you come up with on the fly, according to its website. And because codifying things is such an annoying task, the app does the work for you, offering a system of organization that helps you keep on top of responsibilities. But the best part of the app in my opinion is its contextualization feature, which allows you to group actions based on type. “Gym,” for example, could be one such context.
2. Scanner Pro: One of the things that may be keeping you from the gym is the need to get all those memos scanned for the big meeting. But with Scanner Pro, you can never use that as an excuse again. All smartphones have the ability to take photos, but this app takes two steps forward by making your iPhone into a professional-grade scanner, snapping a photo and turning it into a high quality PDF scan, according to its website. This is great for memos, receipts, notes – even that high-priority contract that needs to be signed. And with the ability to save to the cloud, the app actively encourages better unified communications practices.
3. Angry Birds: This is just a really fun game to play. The logic behind including the game on this list is that it’s a great outlet for the kind of laziness that could lead to an evening on the couch. Instead of plopping down for Dexter reruns, reward yourself with some Angry Birds on the subway and use your time at home to get hyped for the gym.
Work is hard. Working out is harder. When you’re having trouble with both, know that the folks at Fonality understand, and offer unified communications strategies to make life easier.