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Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?

#141
post #96

Anki - jam everything into here. Various work facts, chess mate in X move puzzles, watched movie plots, every time I make a mistake I add it, etc. BrainHQ - train your brain every day, get sharper. I found out about it after reading that Tom Brady uses it to be a better QB. After using it for a couple weeks I could notice a difference.

Just tried BrainHQ, neat app. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?

#142
post #124

These are my "good" apps: - Spotify: everyone loves music. Put it on speakerphone. Dance and sing silly while you cook. - Shazam: discover music. Exactly what apps ought to be. - Google Maps: Does what it does. - Google home: setting my lights to match the time of day / mood / or movie. - Google Authenticator: 2FA is good - "Justin Guitar", a simple guitar tuner, and a metronome app: I've been learning guitar - Duoli…

A note about Google Authenticator. There are alternatives which imo are much better, like LastPast Authenticator or Authy. They work exactly the same but they can back up your codes securely. Big plus if you lose or change your phone.

Yeah I just learned this in fact, that the Google Authenticator app is one thing that does not sync to my google acct seamlessly (read: without asking). Learned it the hard but not unrecoverable way thank goodness.

Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?

#143

Not apps but things that have helped me: * remove All notifications from non-message & Calendar apps. * condition everyone around you that you might not reply messages in time. (crucial to make above work) and ofc you have to follow that too. * (if you have the financial means) get another device without ANY distraction what so ever, ideally disconnected from the internet (except maybe syncing files) For me it is a e…

> * remove All notifications from non-message & Calendar apps.

Absolutely this. Most chat and social apps have no notifications for me. and if any other app sends me notifications that aren't really relevant to me as an individual, then it gets muted too.

But additionally! The "screen time" controls on iOS actually do an even better job at muting notifications, including in apps whose notifications that I never bothered to control as meticulously. Screen time limits the time that an app is available for you that day, I have entire categories of apps down to "15 minutes" with news apps set to 30 minutes a day. The additional unexpected benefit is that this also disables notifications while those apps are blocked for the rest of the day.

Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?

#144
post #41

Earlier 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.

Same here. I bought Procreate for my older iPad Pro and it has proved to be a real game changer for me. It transformed my relationship with the device so much that I installed a few other image tools on there and now it is my go-to for creative work. I also bought some art ‘books’ on the Kindle app and that has also helped with my mental health.

At some point in your life you get bored of doom scrolling on various apps and even browsing the web I’m now totally bored of it all. There isn’t anything new. Getting creative on the iPad using Procreate and using the phone for its camera to take reference shots and arty photos has been great. We have marvellous tools at our disposal and to use them for social media or reading rehashed blog articles masquerading as news seems like a crime to me. At any point in history people would have loved to have those tools available!

Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?

#145

I found an app called Meomind ( https://meomind.com/ ) recently that has helped me a lot. It has a collection of real recorded therapy sessions from individuals that they've decided to share (with personal details scrubbed I assume) that you can listen to at your leisure. They're categorized as well, so if you're looking for understanding why you have a lack of interest in things, are having relationship issues, etc.…

Very cool! I tried to find transcripts of therapy to develop a system. This is the result: https://locserendipity.com/Therapy.html It doesn’t always respond sensibly, but repeating the query will usually hit on a sensible answer after a few tries. It is best used with an intermediary who can enter the queries and respond in a way that is consistent with how a therapist might respond in a real session.

Hm... it feels about on par with Eliza. Or at least I haven't gotten it to provide any constructive insight or meaningful questions. At its best what kind of interactions can it produce?

Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?

#146

These are my "good" apps: - Spotify: everyone loves music. Put it on speakerphone. Dance and sing silly while you cook. - Shazam: discover music. Exactly what apps ought to be. - Google Maps: Does what it does. - Google home: setting my lights to match the time of day / mood / or movie. - Google Authenticator: 2FA is good - "Justin Guitar", a simple guitar tuner, and a metronome app: I've been learning guitar - Duoli…

tangential: Regarding Duolingo, its nice that its a fun gamified thing for you and your wife to do together, consider formal education though. A 3-month class at community college will propel way further than believing Duolingo's method has short circuited a mental process. Duolingo is a decent addition to another learning method. But level 25 isn't going to be fundamentally different than level 7, it will never tell you "why/when/context" and that's very limiting, whereas a teacher can tell you in 20 seconds.

Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?

#147
Libby - endless ebooks from your local library Zotero - I save interesting papers I come across to Zotero and then read them when I have free time. C25K - I hate running. I’ve probably restarted this a dozen times over the past 5 yrs but the ease of the first few workouts makes it easier for me to restart when I stop exercising for a few weeks.

Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?

#148
I bought a smartphone pretty late, only 5-6 years ago. Mainly I wanted an easier way to subscribe to podcasts (I'd been using an MP3 player for this for 10 years, and just using a feature phone for calls). I never actually got hooked on social media stuff or phone games. I'm not on any social media except Letterboxd, and that app is easy not to use because it's pretty terrible. The only game I've ever played on my phone is 80 Days. I mention this so that you can decide whether I am the exact wrong person to give you advice or not.

Anyway, here's what I use:

* Banking and investment apps

* Media apps (Pocket Casts, Audible, Spotify)

* My local library's app (KCLS represent)

* Nature / hiking apps (PeakFinder, AllTrails, iNaturalist, TrailRouter)

* Notion as a todo list / note taking app

* Librarything

* Lyft / Doordash

* Venmo

* Redfin at the moment, because I'm buying a house.

That's all the non 1st-party apps I have. I just don't download anything else.

I think that instead of browsing social media, my equivalent focus-drain is probably listening to podcasts and audiobooks. If you think that's healthier, switch to that. It may be, or I may be fooling myself.

If you have time to kill and want to use an app, how about Duolingo?

Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?

#149
In the spirit of Marshall McLuhan; changing the channel doesn't change the media. You're a dignified person. You needn't engage with the world of ideas through your thumbs and a 4 inch light hole at all. You're important-- if someone needs your correspondence it would be appropriate that this be facilitated by mail and by computer e-mail when time is a concern. Emperors, judges, and men of consequence don't communicate ideas in, "texts" or, "feeds" and you're an emperor; a modern Man-- someone and something of enormous consequence. Treat yourself right. You deserve it. You're intelligent and capable. Don't let the myth of modern culture into yourself at all. You're too valuable for that.

All the best.

Re: Ask HN: What are some mentally healthy apps to have?

#150
post #135
post #96

Anki - jam everything into here. Various work facts, chess mate in X move puzzles, watched movie plots, every time I make a mistake I add it, etc. BrainHQ - train your brain every day, get sharper. I found out about it after reading that Tom Brady uses it to be a better QB. After using it for a couple weeks I could notice a difference.

Love anki. On the topic of brain training, an n-back app working memory training app. Evidence is mixed on whether it works. Anecdotally I've used it and think it worked for me. It's free to train, only cost is your time. I think the risk reward is in favour of trying it for 8 weeks.

The brain training app has n-back style questions. I find them extremely challenging, which is probably a good thing!
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