Three Apps To Help You Focus
It's been quite a year. In just a span of a few months, we've gone from not having any work to do (basically baking banana bread and making Tiktok videos) to having three Zoom meetings in one morning.
Some are temporarily out of work and ideally should take this time to take online classes and self-improvement seminars. Whatever stage of pandemic-life you are in right now, the point is, we all need to focus.
But how is that possible when our work, home, and social life have all melded into one? How can we focus when there's just so much distraction everywhere?
No doubt, we all want to be more productive. We just want to make the most of the time we have, especially since time always seems to escape us.
There was a point when I thought I could manage my distractions by myself. I went cold turkey! I deleted all my social media apps and turned off all my notifications and blocked all the calls.
In theory, it should work, right? Well, I was wrong! I felt so anxious and fidgety. Worst of all, many of my friends and family who couldn't contact me panicked. I missed important calls and wasn't able to catch urgent messages.
So I would not recommend taking this drastic approach. It's all about getting things done, not living a life of drudgery.
Here are three apps designed to help you focus and improve productivity.
1. Forest
I love rewards. And what I love even more is some visual and tangible proof of my reward.
Forest is an app available on both the App Store and Google Play Store. The idea is simple: the longer you stay out of your open, the more your tree grows. The app needs to be open and running to count.
If you leave the app to open distractions like Facebook, your tree dies. It can't get any more visual than that!
Though this is not an app blocker or focus tracker, this is one I've personally experienced to be effective.
In collaboration with researchers and expert institutions, the Brain.fm team have curated and created music that helps one focus.
The science behind it is called neural phase-locking, which coordinates your brain activity to increase concentration and attention. It's designed so that your mind reaches a mental state free of distractions!
Personally, the result is me focusing on the task at hand faster and more effectively than just willing myself to stare at the screen.
If you're the kind who opens multiple tabs, of different topics and tasks at the same time, this app is both a dream and a nightmare.
Hocus Focus hides all the windows that are inactive for some time, so you can only view that one window that you should be focusing on anyway. This way, you aren't switching from your department's Trello board to that Reddit thread about conspiracy theories.
All you need to do is set different time limits for each app installed on your computer. They will disappear when you aren't using them.
Imagine if you are editing videos, you can block all distractions like pop-ups and emails from your desktop.
The app currently only works for the macOS but they can run on both Chrome and Safari.
We should be more forgiving of ourselves this year. But we also need to remind ourselves that we need to get stuff done. Live a balanced and healthy life today!