5 apps to help you keep a work-life balance as a software engineer

Unfortunately, this routine can result in overtime work to complete your tasks. As a result, most of the time you spend at your computer. There is also a chance you're still thinking about work even after your "office hours" are over.

We know your life depends on technology, and finding time for yourself between obligations can be tricky. If you work as an independent contractor or live as a digital nomad, balancing work and personal life can be even more challenging. You need to work, organize your lifestyle, be active and healthy, and stay in touch with your family and friends. Unfortunately, all those responsibilities can make you feel like you don't have enough time to do them.

Luckily, many apps make remote work possible, helping you balance your work and personal life. Let's take a look at some of them.

5 must-have apps that make your life easier

As the name implies, work-life balance means having enough boundaries between work and personal life to take care of physical and mental health to avoid burnout. 

A good work-life balance ensures you can pursue important personal goals, hobbies, and relationships while developing a good professional life. In addition, maintaining a healthy work-life balance is essential for health and relationships and can improve productivity and work performance. Put simply, when you don't view work as a chore, you feel more motivated to work harder and develop greater control over your focus and ability to concentrate on the task at hand. Those are some of the reasons why work-life balance is so crucial.

The main secret to achieving an excellent work-life balance is to set boundaries around working outside of office hours and including leisure time and physical activities in your routine. We picked some work-life balance apps to help you keep yourself on track and maintain your sanity.

Take a look:

Way of Life

This app is a habit tracker that motivates you to build a better, stronger, healthier routine. Way of Life also helps you get rid of bad habits by enabling you to plot daily, weekly and monthly goals. It checks in with you throughout the day. It also features interactive bar charts to help you track your progress and a diary function to quickly jot down what triggered a bad habit.

StressScan

This app encourages you to track how stressed you are each day and the potential causes and symptoms. You can place your finger on your phone's camera for the app to detect changes in color and your heart rate to determine how stressed you're feeling. StressScan aims to show you patterns in your routine that are causing stress and to help you avoid the triggers causing them.

Seven

If you feel sedentary and don't have a gym nearby, you can still stay fit! Seven gives you intense 7-minute workouts daily. You get the maximum benefit from a short amount of time and don't need any equipment. The app allows you to track everyday achievements and gives you daily challenges.

Headspace

This app teaches you how to meditate for only a few minutes daily. As you may know, meditation is a great way to reduce stress and keep your mind focused on staying productive and balanced. Headspace also has tons of articles and audio sharing knowledge about mental health.

Forest 

If you're a fan of the Pomodoro technique regarding productivity, you will enjoy this tool. The Forest app helps you measure your productivity by growing trees while you're working. You can focus on a task for 25 minutes of work and 5 minutes of break. Also, its background music – birds chirping and wind noise – helps focus. When you're more focused on the work, you finish your tasks faster and have more time for yourself at the end of the day.

Again, being a software engineer can be challenging and tiring. You must constantly juggle between working and finding time for yourself and the things you enjoy besides work. But fortunately, it's possible to find a work-life balance that works for you. 

You can count on these apps to get started and on Olby to help you navigate your career!