We've all heard of the illusory work/life balance that books, blogs and the busiest of professionals tell us is attainable — but actually achieving it doesn't feel so simple. It all seems like a classic catch-22: In order to achieve a manageable work/life balance, you have to find time in your already packed schedule to read up on how to achieve it — but you probably don't have the time to dedicate to researching in the first place, because you're too slammed with work. Le sigh.

See also: 7 Daily Tasks You Can Put on Autopilot

Fret no longer — we've done the research for you; we've rounded up eight apps that will help with anything from managing administrative tasks, making shipping a non-pain and even streamlining your social media reporting. So take a deep breath and know you're one step closer to getting the most out of each and every day, with more time to dedicate to what matters most to you.

WunWun is going to be your new best friend if you constantly forget that one item when you're grocery shopping that is absolutely essential to the recipe you’re preparing. Or, if you’re one hour away from an event and you don’t have time to run out and pick up some hors d’oeuvres, someone from WunWun will do it for you. This free (yes free) delivery service connects users to their favorite local stores and restaurants and will deliver purchases within the hour.

These helpers will pick up anything, as long as it's located at a physical address and it can be safely delivered on a bike. There is no fee for using the service, but tipping the helpers is recommended — they’re doing all the running around the city for you, after all. Currently serving neighborhoods in New York City and San Francisco, the service is expanding quickly to other U.S. cities.

For those who want to stay up-to-date on all the breaking news, but don't have time to scour a plethora of websites, Circa is your saving grace. Currently available for download on iPhone and Android, this app allows readers to easily sort through the day’s news by delivering concise coverage straight to your phone. Most notably, Circa is the only such platform that allows readers to "follow" certain stories they are passionate about, ensuring they are updated in a timely fashion as stories develop. So, instead of wasting your time opening up a bunch of different apps, just check this one every morning to make sure you’re well-versed in the world’s current events.

Just one trip to the post office during the holiday season will make even the most mild-mannered person swear off sending gifts entirely. Welcome Shyp — a service that will come to you, pick up your items, pack them and ship them anywhere in the world using the cheapest, most reliable option possible.

All you have to do is download the app, snap a photo of the item you want to ship, enter in the destination and request a pickup. Ta-da! It’s actually that simple. Once you’ve completed those steps, Shyp will come pick up your item and send it on its merry way. Now you can spend all of the time saved standing in line on activities you actually enjoy doing.

Image: Brewster

If you’re tired of searching through your various emails, phone contacts, Facebook friends, etc. looking for the phone number you just know someone sent you, Brewster is going to be your lifesaver. Brewster compiles all of your contacts from all of the aforementioned services including Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, Skype and more.

Once the contacts have been compiled, they update in real time so you always have the most recent information; there’s no need to worry about duplicated or out-of-date contact information. Furthermore, your contacts are available on every device that is synced with your Google account, so they'll automatically populate when you’re writing emails or sending text messages.

Post-it notes and daily planners are organizational tools of the past — instead of carting around a bunch of papers that you might lose, Clear allows you to keep all of your daily tasks in one neat, intuitive app. You can create as many lists as you want, and within those lists you can prioritize your daily tasks using a color-coding system to denote how urgent the task is. Once you've completed a task, you can easily swipe to remove it from the list and move on to the next item on your list. The beautiful interface is what truly sets this app apart from others, as almost everything in the app is controlled by gestures.

Clear is currently available for iOS in the App Store for $4.99 and you can try it free for 14 days to make sure it works for you before you splurge on a paid app.

Whether you’re an executive flying all over the world or you’re a stay-at-home mom overwhelmed with too many tasks, Zirtual, a virtual personal assistant, aims to take some of the administrative and organizational tasks off of your plate, to make your day-to-day a little easier.

Zirtual assistants can respond to emails on your behalf, coordinate travel plans, manage your calendar, create itineraries and much more. Zirtual is also a great if you don't need a full-time assistant, but you still need some help coordinating your hectic schedule. So instead of getting bogged down with all of the small administrative tasks that can suck hours out of your day, you can focus on the important tasks at hand.

Gone are the days when you needed to manually upload all of your photos to Dropbox. Gone are the days of spending hours filling in spreadsheets with tweets that you're tracking for your social media department.

IFTTT (pronounced like "gift" without the "i") stands for "if this then that" — it's a service that lets you create different recipes for streamlining your online activities. For example, you can create a recipe that will send all of your photos to Dropbox once you've uploaded them on Instagram. Or, because of recently introduced Twitter integrations, you can now track hashtags and have the UGC (tweets, photos, Vines, etc.) all populated into a Google doc. Ta-da! Countless squinty-eyed hours saved scouring the Internet, and more time for the happiest of happy hours with your co-workers.

Even the most disciplined of us can get sidetracked on the Internet. Once you come across one interesting article, it's amazing how easy it is to fall down the rabbit hole — and before you know it, an hour has gone by and you've accomplished nothing. If you're constantly distracted by the Internet and the sheer volume of articles you want to get through, Pocket will make everything a little bit easier.

Pocket allows you to save content and view it later. The best feature of Pocket is that you don't need to be online to view the content: Pocket downloads the articles or videos so you can view them during otherwise dead time, when you're on the subway, airplane or anywhere without a Wi-Fi connection. Pocket also syncs with your devices, so you can easily access the content via your iPhone, iPad, Android, Kobo or web browser.