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Who doesn’t want to be a little smarter? If raising your IQ isn’t enough, just being able to start a conversation with someone should be a good reason. But who has time to read or watch a 2-hour documentary or take an online course?
The app is a “time-of-the-moment” solution.
The idea is to give new purpose to any downtime you may have in the day. While you’re sitting in the car pool line scrolling through Tiktok or Facebook, you can put that time to good use by learning something more important than the latest viral dance craze.
The app “UpTime” claims it can use just 5 minutes of that downtime to make you smarter.
Uptime delivers bite-sized ideas and thoughts from the world’s greatest minds. The app brings together some of the best sellers along with documentaries and courses and presents them on the smartphone screen in graphics, text, animation, video and audio.
After choosing from the topics you want, the app will display a wide selection of books, documents and courses in your selection. For example, I chose topics about business, relationships, money, and health and fitness.
App showed me a book on communication skills by Alex Lyon. The screens displayed ideas taken from the book. I can choose to read it myself or an audio recording. Another feature is Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Point of Evidence,” which not only includes quotes and insights, but also clips from Gladwell’s TedTalks.
If you can’t wrap your head around Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time, Uptime summarizes the most important quotes from the book and some starting points you can throw into a conversation.
Another hack is the documentary “Mike Wallace Is Here.” This documentary tells the story of legendary CBS reporter Mike Wallace, who became the first journalist to face tough questions from mainstream journalists. This hack has featured several clips from the documentary and Wallace’s TV profiles over the years.
“Hacks,” as Uptime calls them, are 5-minutes, so I always find time to try something new while standing in line, waiting for someone in the car, or during commercial breaks.
“UpTime” is a free app and the company sends out a free “Daily Hack” every day, but if you want more than 3,000 topics, there’s a premium subscription that costs $20 a month or $80. There’s a free 3-day trial to try if you like subscribing.
