By Holly O'Neill
20th Jun 2017
20th Jun 2017
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Productivity? There’s an app for that.
Do you have trouble with staying productive?
Can’t blame you. Everything is fighting for your attention; email, co-workers, deadlines, social media, text messages, notifications. Working alongside the Internet can be the best thing ever and the worst thing ever: the whole world of information is available at your finger tips in a way it’s never been before, but we are drowning in information, overwhelmed by choice, retaining nothing, with an attention span of about three minutes as we hop between tabs and devices.
Sometimes I get things done by making my Internet browser full screen – for some reason that cuts off everything in my peripherals and I can only focus on what I’m working on. Sometimes I tell myself I’m only going to work on something for fifteen minutes, then set a timer and do my best to focus on that task for that time.?By far my most effective way of getting anything done is by employing?The Science of Treat Yo’self, where I envisage the reward I will treat myself with after I complete a task. When you finish this list, you can make tea. When you finish that task, ?you can eat chocolate. You’re reinforcing your good behaviour in order to make yourself likely to repeat it – like you’re a dog. Essentially I’m living my life around excuses to eat chocolate. In fact, you’ve done quite well by reading this far – look at you, on the road to a more productive life! You get to pause reading momentarily and stick the kettle on and eat a slab of Dairy Milk.
Here’s my newest foray into a more productive life – less apps that make you procrastinate and more apps that help you stay productive. Hopefully, these three apps will help make your road to productivity a shorter one.
MOMENT
How much time do you think you spend on your phone everyday? Take a guess.
Well you’re wrong. It’s wayyy more than that.
MOMENT is an app that meticulously tracks how long you spend on your phone every day. The app’s tagline is “put down your phone and get back to your?life’, but obviously you have to pick up the phone to use the app to establish just how much you need to put down the phone and get back to your life. You will cringe when you see how much you use your phone. I downloaded the app at about 4pm on Monday. By Wednesday morning, I’d been on my phone for 7 hours and 31 minutes, and had picked up my phone 109 times. There’s also a Scroll Bar Of Shame, a timeline where you can see what time of the day you picked your phone up and how much time you spent on it. For example, 5.34pm – 26 minutes, 8.20pm – 2 minutes, 8.32pm – 2 minutes , 9.02pm -?3 minutes.?That’s when I stopped looking at the screen of the TV to switch to the screen of my iPhone for the full three minutes of ad breaks – 8.30pm and 9pm.?Terrifying. After that I got caught up in my own personal game of Stay-Off-Your-Phone-To-Keep-Your-Moment-Score-Down.?
The Moment app will show you whether or not you’re using your time wisely, and once it’s?scared you into realising how much time of day you spend staring obediently at the glare of your smart phone, you’ll work on how much time you’re wasting.?Unless you do what I did. I played myself and switched my phone to airplane mode so the Moment app couldn’t track me for a few minutes and I could get some guilt-free phone time. Don’t play yourself. – DJ Khaled.?
DONELIST
Although it can be outrageously satisfying to tick your way through a to-do list, you more than likely write yourself an unrealistic version that does nothing but accumulate. Enter the Donelist app. A Done List will motivate you to keep making progress, where a To-Do List is a nagging little pressure of control and guilt. You can also colour-code your tasks, if you’re that person. The app will?help you feel productive, content and energized, will keep you motivated and encourages higher levels of efficiency throughout the day, so you’re more likely to perform faster, with a better outcome.
FOCUS @ WILL
Were you the kind of person who couldn’t study for their Leaving without the radio on the in background? Do you find it tough to focus while you’re studying, working or reading? Then you neeeeed this app.
Neuroscience and music are combined to boost productivity and help you focus longer and faster. It’s “brain music”- thousands of hours of music, with a new channel each month, all remastered and optimised to reduce distractions. Is it effective? Try it for yourself – there’s a possibility your productivity could be increased up to 400%.
There’s also a channel dedicated to ADD and ADHD which is constantly being updated.
Let us know your tips for productivity in the comments below!
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