3 Can’t-Miss Life Hacks To Try This Week — Apr 13 2015

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away." "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." You've heard them all before. But, it's 2015. Things are a little different now, so we took a handful of well-known aphorisms and gave them a contemporary spin. Those pieces of advice are decidedly more useful when there's a modern-day solution you can apply. Read on to see what we mean. “An App Doctor A Day Keeps the IRL Doctor Away”

Let’s say you’re feeling bloated, tired, and cranky for no reason.
You go on WebMD and rapidly click your way into convincing yourself that you’re
pregnant. Or, you fall down a deep, dark click hole of symptoms — only to
determine that you must, in fact, be dying.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could put
your mind at ease by chatting with a doctor? Try downloading Maven. For as little as $18 for 10 minutes (less than a
copay for an in-person consultation), you can video-chat with physicians, nurse
practitioners, and allied health providers — many of whom are women, and all of whom have video bios you can watch before choosing whom you want to chat with. They provide professional feedback on what ails you, and they give you the healthiest
thing of all: peace of mind. Personally, I always worry about the side effects of
birth control, but Maven’s “Doctor Jen” broke it down for me and set my mind at
ease. Whew.

“Good Trips Come To Those Who Wait”

Contrary to my mom’s advice, booking plane tickets early, and
sometimes on specific days of the week — Tuesday, anyone? — is
not the best route to the lowest fare. With apps like Hopper (which
launched just a few months ago), you can simply enter your desired dates and
locations, and elect to get push notifications that ping you as
prices go up and down, with a percentage probability tracker of when you should
buy. This can save you as much as 40% on flights. When I was looking into flying to
Miami last month, ticket prices were so high I felt indefinitely grounded — but Hopper helped me score a last-minute steal.

“Drink To Live; Don’t Live To Drink”

It’s pretty common to overhear someone say “I need to drink more water.” Between
working out, going out, and coffee, we’re all left feeling a little
dehydrated. Good thing there’s a new crop of water-tracking apps that help you monitor
your H20 intake. WaterIn successfully gamifies the experience, offering cool visualizations of how
much you drank and how much more you need to drink to get those eight glasses per day. Although there's much debate about whether eight glasses is truly the magic number, there’s no denying that staying hydrated comes with a bevy
of health benefits. I used to suck at drinking water; now, I suck it down.