Our phones can be great tools for supporting our efforts to introduce new behaviours into our life. Apps that provide random reminders are hard to find, but we found a couple. Reading time ~ 2 minutes.
A student contacted me recently having read my ‘How to find good health-related mobile apps‘ post.
They were having trouble finding an app that provided random reminders.
Why would they want such an app?
Well, some habits that are beneficial to develop are best triggered in a random fashion.
For example, if we are trying to get better at identifying and naming our emotions, it can be helpful to be prompted to do this on a random schedule, allowing for the possibility of catching us ‘in the moment’, rather than at a pre-designated time.
Or perhaps we are trying to practice taking moments of mindfulness throughout the day and instead of wanting to do this on a schedule, we’d instead like to take random moments throughout the day to try this.
Anyway, as the student was experiencing, and I subsequently experienced, it was actually difficult to find apps that provide reminders on random schedules. There are plenty of excellent reminder apps, but most of them don’t seem to have a random reminder function.
We found three though.
On iOS we found Yapp Reminders and Reporter
On Android we found Randomly RemindMe
All seem popular and highly rated, although I have not used them myself. They might serve you well for any behaviour change projects you are engaged in that could utilise a random reminder schedule.
If you know of other apps that have this capacity, I’d love to hear about them.
I love the idea of an app reminder, it is a perfect way to force myself to stop and do something that I keep putting off. For me it would be to ‘book in’ time for mindfulness which can get forgotten about in the hustle and bustle of daily life. I’ll give one a shot and keep you posted!
Yeah, when the student asked me the question, I thought it was a great tool to implement. I was then surprised to find that most reminder apps don’t have a random function. Hopefully that changes. I think your use-case of using it for mindfulness reminders is a great example of how to use it. Punctuate the day with moments of focused attention. Look forward to hearing how it goes!