I have a variety of recurring tasks that require different tools: 1) Writing, 2) Social Media Management, 3) Event Planning. Concentrate – Maximize focus while shifting between different tasks.Ĭoncentrate is great for shifting between tasks that require different mindsets. Its most effective use is as a sort of wake-up call: If your daily timeline shows you shifting between apps and tasks every 2 minutes or less, you know there’s a problem. This good-looking app tracks everything you do on your computer, spitting back out a sort of “attention audit.” How much time are you spending in Firefox? How many hours a day in your email client? What are listening to on iTunes? If you let TrackTime run in the background, it builds these patterns into a lovely rainbow-colored timeline of your online life. TrackTime – Audit how you’re spending your time on your computer. So, rather than completely disabling the entire Internet, you can selectively decide which sites are OK, or not OK, to visit during your focus period. Before you have heart palpitations, know that you can whitelist or blacklist certain sites. No amount of browser restarts or computer reboots will stop it. Set it for 4 hours, for instance, and your browser will behave as if it’s offline for that period of time. If you find yourself slipping into a Twitter sinkhole when you should be updating your business plan, Self-Control may be the app you need. Self-Control – Block out distracting websites for a set amount of time. With this in mind, I’ve rounded up a handful of the best apps for fighting back against the constant distractions of our digital lives.

With a tidal wave of information coming at us daily, focus is rapidly becoming the scarcest commodity of the 21st century. Summing the research, the New York Times wrote, “Whatever people were doing, whether it was having sex or reading or shopping, they tended to be happier if they focused on the activity instead of thinking about something else.” In short, being mentally “present” and focused on the task at hand really does matter – quite a lot, in fact. A recent happiness study from Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert found that the more our minds wander, the less happy we are.

Focus writer for windows