If you find yourself spending too much time on your phone and getting distracted from the tasks you are trying to get done, the Forest app may be just what you need.
When you find yourself needing to focus on a particular task, open the Forest app and plant a tree. So long as you remain focused, the tree will continue to grow. If you exit the app at any point to look at your phone the tree will die. The more focused you are, the more trees you can grow, and you will eventually be able to turn them into a forest, as well as being rewarded with extra tree species as you progress.
Engross is an app that is designed to help you manage your time more wisely and avoid procrastination – all using the Pomodoro technique.
The Pomodoro technique is a time management technique developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s that helps to manage productivity. It breaks your work down into smaller tasks, making them easier to manage. You work for a set amount of time (generally 25-30 minutes) and then have a set 5-minute break before restarting the timer and resuming work. After you have repeated this four times, you can then take a longer 15–30-minute break.
This technique is supposed to help improve you focus during your set working intervals. The good thing about Engross is that you can customise the intervals based on how long you want to work and the length of break you’d like in between.
Engross also comes with a distraction tracker. Every time you notice yourself getting distracted from the task at hand, press a button on the screen. The app will then gather statistics about when you get most distracted throughout the day to help you avoid these distractions in future.
Manually signing into all your accounts on a daily basis is one of the repetitive tasks that can be made so much easier by using an app such as Keeper.
Using a password management app can help you to store all of your digital passwords in one place, making it easier to log into your accounts and, most importantly, simultaneously keep your passwords secure.
Keeper allows you to sync your data across all platforms, storing your passwords regardless of which device or browser you use. After adding an account, use the ‘automated app fill’ feature on your mobile device to avoid typing your sign-in information.
Another useful aspect of Keeper is the option to have both personal and business accounts synced.
If you are an avid note-taker, you might find yourself with notes on the same topic located all over the place, making them hard to find.
Evernote is an app that can help you organise your notes, allowing you manage and store them all in one place. So, if you’re a person who writes notes on your phone during your morning commute or collates their thoughts in word documents with accompanying handwritten sticky notes, Evernote could be a useful tool for you.
You can sync all your notes across different devices, as well as capture handwritten notes, photos, audio, digital sketches, and PDFs. To add to this, all of your notes (including images) are instantly searchable in the app, making them quicker and easier to locate.
Loop is an app that can help you to build positive habits. You simply create a list of habits you’d like to build on the app and then set an intention to do something regularly – which could be anything from doing yoga twice a week to writing for 15 minutes every day. The app then keeps track of how regularly you do this, displaying your progress in a variety of ways, in addition to reminding you about the intention in advance.
Apps like Loop differ from to-do lists as you can only add recurring tasks and not individual ones. Depending on where you look, a task can reportedly take anywhere between 21, 30, and 60 days to turn into a habit, so a habit tracker app might be the extra push you need to help you stick to it throughout the year.
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