Welcome to 2014! I thought I’d kick off the new year by telling you about a couple of apps that can help make 2014 your best year ever.
#1: Productivity Wizard
Here’s what we know for sure: People who set goals achieve more than those who don’t. Setting goals works -- it’s just not easy to stick with them after the first few weeks of January.
The Productivity Wizard app is designed to help you with that. It guides you through a pretty good process for creating goals, choosing the two or three that are most important (the fewer goals, the more likely you are to achieve them), setting action plans, and getting into weekly and daily routines.
I especially like the Morning Routine tool, which helps me focus on the three or four things I can do each day to inch me closer to my targets. I’m a big believer in the principle of incremental gains -- taking small steps every day to achieve satisfying long-term results.
#2: Breath Pacer
Life moves at a hectic pace for most of us. When you feel wound up and stressed out, try adding 10 minutes of Breath Pacer to your coffee break. This app is a simple guided breathing exercise that will help bring you back mentally and physically to a place where you can perform at your best. Ask any elite athlete and he or she will tell you that breathing right is critical to peak performance. Breath Pacer makes it easy.
#3: Simply Being
The new hot topic in business literature is mindfulness and it's relationship to peak performance. What the heck is mindfulness? Simply put, it’s the mental ability to stay focused and in the moment. There’s a bunch of new research that indicate it’s another key factor in peak performance. Mindfulness is the opposite of feeling distracted or mentally overloaded, something we all experience as a by-product of busy schedules and constantly interacting with people and electronic devices. The Simply Being app is a guided meditation that builds the capacity for mindfulness. I recommend 10 minutes before you go to sleep at night not only for a more restful sleep but for achieving a Zen-like edge at work.
There you go...three daily, 10-minutes activities that will definitely up your game. Best wishes for a productive, healthy, and happy 2014!
