Put your phone in airplane mode and live it in your pocket. Get a Kindle with you, for the times you want to consume content.
Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?
71–80 of 236 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?
#72This is how I started in 2014 and I have given this to so many people, and they love it. Start by disabling notifications everywhere except for critical ones that are key to you.
https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activi...
Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been stuck in bed due to medical stuff quite a bit over the last year. My iPhone has essentially preserved my sanity. Like any powerful tool, the user can can choose to make it good or bad. I learned quite a bit about music theory and writing music over the last year. The iOS music ecosystem is fantastic and affordable. I’ve been drawing in procreate on my iPad for several years but this also helped pass the hou…
> The iOS music ecosystem is fantastic and affordable. I've been having good experiences recently with Flip for some quick fun jams. Any suggestions of the "fantastic" kind ?
Depends what kind of music you're interested in making, but Pure Acid [0] is insanely fun. There's a ton of very serious music tools on iOS too, on the host end I'd recommend NanoStudio 2, AUM or Drambo.
Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?
#74Extremely unpopular opinion from a software engineer on a tech forum but: mental health is as far away from the Internet as possible. The more you can integrate the slower pace of nature and natural life, the better your mental health. Your physical presence is optimised for long days of doing fuck all, sitting in the grass, waiting for a deer to pass by. Still struggling with this, but my long term life goal is livi…
> The more you can integrate the slower pace of nature and natural life, the better your mental health. Your physical presence is optimised for long days of doing fuck all, sitting in the grass, waiting for a deer to pass by.
I am 1000% on board with this perspective, yet find your prescriptive solution to be a tad askew.
To me, the early internet - especially the pre-broadband days - was very similar to "doing fuck all," waiting for something to come by my screen to engage my focus & attention. In fact, the keyboard-driven computing world was a very pure invocation of the hunter-gatherer mindset. I wrote an article on Medium about this back in 2017, called "Tyrannical Illiteracy." [0]
I have yet to conceive of a more fitting description of today's internet than that.
[0] https://medium.com/@AndrewUnmuted/tyrannical-illiteracy-part...
Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Creative apps are healthy apps.
Procreate my well be the best value per dollar of anything I’ve purchased in my entire life measured in hours of joy and self-improvement it has provided.
I second this. I purchased an older ipad pro, pencil, and procreate for probably around $900 total. I rarely use the iPad for anything else (whiteboarding is the other main use), and joke that it's my Procreate machine. It's still the best money I've spent.
Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?
#76Peloton’s app has become core to some of my mental health routines. Even if you don’t have the bike, the 10min guided workouts are fantastic for getting your body moving. But my most used feature is the meditations. I’ve racked up over 600 meditation sessions since the beginning of the pandemic and it’s helped me greatly.
Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?
#77It's not news or anything but Strides has probably given me the greatest quality of life boost this year. It's a pretty simple app where you list habits you want to foster and you then mark them off each day (or are reminded to do so when you don't). Keeping up streaks of certain good habits has done me a lot of good the past few months :-)
Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?
#78For me, AllTrails is great for biking/hiking, and lets you share things with some light social media features.
Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?
#79The off button.
Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?
#80Put your phone in airplane mode and live it in your pocket. Get a Kindle with you, for the times you want to consume content.
I was opposed to electronic reading of all types having spent much of my life in academic libraries. I'm now on my second Kindle Paperwhite; I gifted the previous generation to a sibling's seven-year old. The Kindle is the only device I take truly everywhere: grocery shopping, strolls in the woods, kayaking & sailing, to bed, to the skatepark. It lives on my body or within three feet. During eight hours of emergency eye surgery for my late dog, the Kindle allowed me to escape the most anxious period of my sheltered life. While waiting at the DMV, the Kindle preserves my sanity. What could otherwise be stressful time becomes an opportunity to enjoy literature or non-fiction and grow my understanding of this world.