Stay focused, be present

I have recently been trying to find some apps that will help me with my focus. I used an app called impulse blocker which would block any website that you would add to the list. You can enable and disable it whenever you liked, but I often found I would just disable it for a large duration of time and then become easily distracted.

I also found it wouldn’t allow me to track my time in attention at all which I feel is what I needed the most.

Enter Forest App

Forest is a fantastic app that helps me set a timer on a tree, when I plant that tree, it will start to track my time. Once the time has passed, I have now grown a beautiful tree, if you download the app on your phone, you can see your forest and which days you were most productive.

I have the app on my phone and on my work computer as a FireFox add-on. Using the timer in my browser allows me to also block any sites that may distract me. It will cover the website with the logo and let me know how much longer I have until I can view the site. Once my tree is planted, I then receive some coins (the longer the timer, the more coins you can accumulate) and can reward myself with some distraction time.

It would be cool to see it expanded upon, perhaps being able to set work hours, the length of productivity time and the length of break time. Say I set an hour of productivity time and 15 minutes break time, it could just cycling through that from the start of my workday to the end.

What are your thoughts on this app? Is there anything else you would recommend to help keeping your productivity levels up? Let me know in the comments below.