Essential Tech for Busy Career Women

Entrepreneurship can be rewarding—but it can be exhausting, too. After all, you wear many hats. In your venture, you play the role of visionary, operational manager, sales and marketing head, and more—often simultaneously. Pair that with the accessibility barriers in networking, funding, and mentorship women of color face as entrepreneurs, and you’ve got the perfect formula for burnout. 

In fact, the mere aspect of gender makes you more vulnerable to burnout as a whole. Over 74% of working women report feeling significantly stressed—compared to just 61% of working men. That’s primarily because they’re more likely to experience work-family interference. Being an entrepreneur on top of a career woman can exacerbate that effect, especially if you work in busy fields like marketing. 
That’s why it’s so crucial to care for your physical, mental, and emotional well-being as you help your venture grow. As seen in our post Empowerment Strategies for the Female Entrepreneur, delegation is the best way to do so. By prioritizing your tasks, training a team that can help you accomplish multiple responsibilities, and leveraging technology to streamline more detailed work such as organizing your finances, you can ease your workload and give yourself more time for self-care. 

But why stop there? Even physical gadgets can help you achieve optimal empowerment and well-being as a busy career woman pursuing an entrepreneurial career—and they can do so both in and out of the office. Here are some tech essentials you can try. 

But why stop there? Even physical gadgets can help you achieve optimal empowerment and well-being as a busy career woman pursuing an entrepreneurial career—and they can do so both in and out of the office. Here are some tech essentials you can try. 

An electric standing desk converter

As the head of your own business, you probably spend most of your working days sitting in your office chair and typing away on your computer just to meet all the deadlines your busy career imposes. If you do, you’re more vulnerable to work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Think about it this way: you’re seated for eight hours or more at a time, during which you lock your body in a single position. That makes you more prone to strain and fatigue that eventually leads to aches and pains. Unfortunately, these issues can affect more than just your physical health. According to Kelley’s Textbook of Rheumatology, they can cause musculoskeletal injuries that make up over half of all nonfatal injury cases that result in sick leaves. Essentially, you’re at risk of forcing yourself out of the office and away from your business for prolonged periods. 

That’s where an electric standing desk converter can help. Though a larger gadget than usual, it addresses the root cause of musculoskeletal disorders: too much sitting. Models like the Vari Pro Plus 36 use an electric motor so you can easily convert your sitting desk to a standing one with the touch of a button. With it, you can improve blood circulation to your legs. Multiple height settings can also adjust to you to promote better posture. All these things can help you prevent the eye strain, neck pain, and back pain you’d otherwise be vulnerable to without this gadget. 

Some noise-canceling headphones 

Are you a work-from-anywhere type of gal? Distractions galore await you at your favorite coworking spaces and coffee shops. You may even have a productivity-sapping environment at home if you live along a busy street, have rowdy neighbors, or live with family. If you need to concentrate just to keep up with your hectic workload, all these things can keep you from being productive—and that’s why you may want to get yourself a pair of noise-canceling headphones. 

Unlike regular headphones, these use a built-in microphone to actively monitor the sounds around you. They then produce sound waves designed to be the exact opposite of the ambient noise in your environment, effectively canceling them out. The Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones go even further by enhancing the sounds you choose to play from your devices. That makes them particularly useful if your busy schedule requires you to hold remote, on-the-go meetings in less-than-ideal environments, as these headphones also come with a reduction feature that minimizes the amount of background noise that comes through from your end. 

A pet companion robot 

Though getting yourself some productivity-boosting gadgets can be great for keeping up with your busy schedule as an entrepreneur, it’ll also help to look at some essential tech that can help you care for yourself in your off-time. As a woman, you’re more vulnerable to experiencing depression and anxiety than men. That’s chiefly because of the emotional labor you’re expected to perform at home and in the office. That’s why—though it may seem non-essential—having a pet companion robot can actually be crucial for a busy career woman like yourself. 

A study from JAMA Network Open finds that pets can significantly improve well-being in women, and that can help put you in a better mindset to perform better at work. However, pets are also high-maintenance, and it may be hard for you to find the time to care for them amid hectic work schedules. GULIGULI’s pet companion robot shows that this gadget can make things easier by keeping your pets company while you’re away. It’s completely remote entertainment system comes with features like a treat dispenser that can keep your beloved fur baby occupied during office hours, while an additional moving camera and two-way audio channel can help you check in on and communicate with them even between meetings. If you’d love to have a pet but feel that tools like automated feeders and self-cleaning litter boxes won’t be enough to help you care for them responsibly, this companion robot is definitely worth looking into. 

A sleep assistant 

At the end of the day, resting and recharging yourself is the most important thing you need to pay attention to if you want to succeed as a woman entrepreneur. Getting enough sleep is vital if you want to have the energy required to tackle each new challenge that comes up at work. In contrast, the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship finds that sleep deprivation can actually put the health of your venture at risk. It can negatively impact your capacity for innovative and flexible thinking, affecting how well you can come up with creative ideas and solutions. More concerning, perhaps, is the fact that sleeplessness can worsen your ability to effectively relate to others, which can affect how much you can maximize networking opportunities. 

If the anxieties of being an entrepreneur keep you up at night—especially if your business is going through a rough patch—you may thus want to look into getting yourself a sleep assistant. The features offered by Somnox’s sleep assistant robot illustrate how one can help you wind down at night. This gadget works by using a microphone and motion sensor to assess your respiration rates so it can stimulate the scientifically backed soothing effects of having a baby breathe on your chest as you sleep. When similarly placed on your chest at night, it then moves at a particular pace. By synchronizing your breathing with the movement of the robot, you can more easily guide yourself toward a breath-per-minute ratio designed to more effectively lull you to sleep. That way, you can easily calm your body down and get the rest you need—even after a particularly stressful day at work. 

Image via Pexels

Written by Regina James; regina.james.writes@gmail.com