Focus Apps: A Love-Hate Relationship

BY SASHA EFIMCHIK Staff Reporter

Introduction

Focus apps are a way to focus on your work in a more fun way than a regular timer. Just to make it more fun, you get rewards for however long you study. Some apps are very effective and I feel very productive after a study session, while others are not.

Focuspomo

This app is certainly different than others I have used. FocusPomo motivates you to study with the promise of a screen of cute smiling tomatoes; when you finish a timed study session, you earn a brightly colored tomato that bounces around your screen for a week. The size of your tomato depends on how long you have been studying. The length of the chosen timer is very reasonable; from fifteen minutes to an hour and a half. If you stop your timer, which you do by pressing and holding the screen, you still receive a tomato, though it frowns instead of smiling. I like two things about this: you can’t accidentally pause your timer, and you don’t get punished for not finishing the full time. In fact, you still get rewarded for what you complete, which I approve of. The frown of your tomato serves as a reminder, though, to do your best to finish your time.

Another thing I like about this is that the app stays on your screen while you study. The screen isn’t distracting either; it’s just a black screen with the timer itself, the time in the upper left corner, and the battery in the right.

Flora

Using this app caused much more stress than productivity for me. Flora motivates you by promising a tree for every study session. This is nice except for the fact that if you leave the app, it thinks that you have stopped focusing, and quits your timer. It doesn’t tell you that this happens beforehand, and then guilts you for failing by showing a tree with no leaves with a red background with the words “you killed a tree”. It further taunts you by showing that right now only you can see this, but you can also share this with your friends if you want them to shame you as well. What is also odd about this app is that you can motivate yourself with money. You can put money on your time and punish yourself if you fail your timer by donating money to the app. Mind you, you don’t receive more money if you succeed; the money just goes back to you. I do not recommend this app unless you are very sure that you won’t need your phone for whatever it is you are focusing on and are confident that you will finish your timer. The one plus is that according to the app, they actually plant a real tree for every tree you earn.