Apps That Motivate You

Apps or applications as they're called can be both fun and practical. An app is a small software program that is downloaded onto a mobile device such as a tablet, iPhone or computer.  These apps can help you perform tasks and motivate you or your team to work harder. Many of them are designed for fun and games too. 

Over the last few years apps have become extremely popular and new ones are being offered all the time. If you can dream it there is probably an app that has been made for it or someone is working on it.  

You may not even be aware of all of the different types of Apps that are available to you. 

Lifestyle Apps are ones that define your lifestyle.  Fitness, music, travel and food fit into this category.  These are designed to make it easy for you to find that restaurant or look up a song, etc. 

Social Media Apps are a huge business. These include apps like FB, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and so forth. These apps have given people the ability to share everything in their day to day lives if they want too and as we know some do share way too much! 

Cool apps that we like to use for short periods of time might be a Weather app, appointment reminders, the calculator app or simply make use of the flashlight app.  The list goes on. 

The gaming industry has a super large base of app users. So many people like to play games on their mobile devices. It's become a pass time for many when waiting at appointments, standing in lines and just feeling the urge to do something to fill their time. Avid game app users come back time and again to use these apps and the developers love this, so more and more games and entertainment apps are created. 

Apps can be used to help companies run their businesses better. Onenote, Docs, Wallet, are just a small sample of apps that a businesses may use. 


One of my favorite apps that I've recently started using over the last month is a fitness app called Strava.  This is a running and cycling app. I use it to keep track of my cycling work outs. 

The app tracks your activities via GPS marking your starting point to the end of your run or bike ride. A map shows you the exact route that you traveled and shows you stats like your time, meters climbed, how many calories you burned.  It also allows you to compare your stats with others in your network. These can be friends or it will also show the stats of people that you don't know but that may have done the same route as you. It also highlights trophies for you when you repeat a route or section of a run or ride and beat your previous time. This gives you incentive and can motivate you to put in that extra effort. You can share your ride with others and see how you ranked on segments marked by other riders.  I think it's a great motivator and can help push you to do your personal best. Great for those with a little competitive edge.  

There are lots of cool cycling apps to choose from but Strava seems to have most tools that one needs or wants, if you haven't tried a biking app yet and you need a little push to get off that couch this could help boost your fitness and give you the motivation you need to keep moving.  

Here is a sample of one of my bike rides using Strava to track it. 

Upcycle and Use Your Creativity

Upcycling is a term that means turning your unwanted or unused items into products of better quality. The goal of upcycling is to prevent wasting potentially useful materials by making use of them. This reduces the consumption of new raw materials when creating new products. It's essentially re-purposing an old or unused item into something useful again.  

Developing countries around the world having been doing this for years. They use old wrappings from packaging in new ways. They reuse clothing for other purposes and find interesting uses for many natural resources around them. 

With sites like Etsy and Pinterest we can see that 'upcycling' and 'repurposing' are terms that are used constantly with DIYers and home decorators. After all it is fun to take an old piece or unused item that you may have just sent to a second hand store be turned into a something useful again. 

Onto my little project. Years ago when I was into tole painting, I painted this wooden box that I used to keep loose photographs in. It was an old cutlery box to begin with. The inside is all padded. I had stained it and painted the top with a pretty floral picture.  Recently as I was cleaning out a few things I came across the box and thought I might repaint it and give it a more modern look. I left the stain on it and just taped off some lines and spray painted it with black and then silver stripes, nothing fancy just a little more mod. I can still use it to hold pictures if I like or I could use it to keep some of my  jewelry organized. That sounds like a good idea for it.  Here is the before and after pictures. 

Well maybe this will inspire you to think of another use for something before you decide to get rid of it. Why not, little projects are fun to do.  Stay creative! :-)