Apps to Help You Focus on Work

Seems like everybody claims to strive for more work achievements while frantically trying numerous productivity apps, but, actually, it turns out to be a huge challenge when it comes to focus and concentration on work itself.

As Cal Newport, best-selling author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, put it:

The ability to sustain deep focus on our most important work is growing rarer at the same time it’s becoming more essential.

Why you need apps for focus, or Reasons you cannot concentrate

First things first, the biological factors determine the limit of our focus, which answers the question of why we struggle for focus at times. But the good news is that we do not need the focused thinking for all the activities because, according to Sebastian Bailey:

An ideal state of mind fluctuates between thinking and engaged— whatever a current situation demands of you.

Meanwhile, focus being the driving force of business productivity is absolutely required when we deal with project-based endeavors like writing an article, mastering the new techniques, or searching for the innovative solutions to the problem.

The major focus killers that we certainly can deal with:

• Distractions on social media that disrupt the workflow
• Interruption on responses that add to workload
• Noisy environment lowering the concentration abilities
• Digital 'under-equip' that costs you time on performing repetitive tasks
• Inadequate task or project management that slows down the performance.

The dangers of ignoring these factors can lead to:

• persistently fragmented attention
• addictive patterns of behavior
• time management pitfalls.

With that being said, the question we address below is what technological solutions we can find for fixing the focus issues.

Software fixing your focus on work

If your many-pages 'distractions menu' includes social media, dozen messengers and addictive games, it is better to reconsider your habits.

Since modern work spaces are prone to rely on collaborative environment quite heavily, it translates into excessive utilizing the social media that turns out to be disruptive for your focus.

Apps to try

Do not put blind trust into your willpower by assuming that you can manage your time 100%. It is a big temptation to 'just check' on Facebook news feed when your app is loading. In case you have site blockers, or related apps that work as 'focus holders', you exclude this type of distraction. The ones that we would recommend:

Forest

With this app, by setting time, you 'launch' planting the trees. The more you concentrate on your work, the more 'tangible' results you get in the end. The app utilizes the mechanism of visualizing, which helps you stay on track and directs you in achieving your goals. Join the community of the most focused and dedicated, and add to over 555000 trees already 'planted'.

How it improves your focus at work: It is a top tool for fighting procrastination in fun and easy way. It prevents you from answering texts and calls because it would literally mean 'killing' the tree you are growing.

FocusMe

This is the right app for those who believe in setting limits as the effective way of directing your efforts for staying focused. It easily fights the urge to check on email and social media notifications. With great technical support and a variety of configuration options, it will remove any distractions that might hold your productivity back.

How it improves your focus at work: The time setting features in this app make goals achievable by reducing stress caused by unexpected distractions and filtering the online content so that you could get only the best of it.

Freedom

We live in the world where social media presence is ubiquitous. But when consciously decreasing time we spend on social media, we give our life more sustainability and contribute to psychological well-being.

How it improves your focus at work: With applying Freedom, you open the way to become more successful as a professional. Installing it on any of the device you work on, you set the block list and get the opportunity to concentrate on tasks at hand. Its filtering capabilities can cover a number of resources, which makes this app one of the best working blockers.

More apps to try

At times, feeling anxious about keeping all the detail under control can greatly influence our ability to focus. Surprisingly, workplace with its coded behavior can 'contribute' to focus disruption and, as a result, scatter attention.

To help us wear professional versions of ourselves with ease and show full capability of focused work, we can apply digital tools of assistance that keeps us in state of flow and productivity boost mode.

They can guarantee to manage:

• work time
• tasks and to-do lists
• projects regardless of their complexity.

Furthermore, these apps reinforce the professional and personal confidence, normalize the situation, and compensate the losses if needed.

TMetric

It is widely known that uncertainty is a killer for focus. By incorporating a time tracker into your daily routine, you achieve better focus with dividing each activity into smaller easily tracked tasks.

The data collected on completed projects will be a great source of information for further perfecting your 'focus sharpening' skills.

Time in TMetric is recorded alongside with the level of activity signaling your engagement in work, which means that you will be able to define your productivity performance peak hours.

How it improves your focus at work: In particular, it is a mega effective tool in case you work from home: knowing productivity peaks will be important for setting your routines accordingly and allocating time of performing repetitive task for lower-energy moments.

Nikabot

It is an app that lets you allocate time you spend across multiple projects and even more than one team.

Nikabot is a perfect fit for gaining greater visibility on the time spent per task and project. It is a good tool for incorporating into app system at work due to its wide reporting capabilities: these features are well-designed and easy to use.

How it improves your focus at work: The tool provides facility to see the breakdown of projects into the task in a colorful graphic depiction. You can customize the project reports by the last few weeks or between two dates. Plus, you can anytime rename, merge or delete the different projects.

Timeular

Time tracking data elucidates previously murky information on what specific tasks your team was working on.

So in case you need your time tracking to be quintessential accurate then you need to apply this zero-clutter software. It removes any limitations on your ability to focus and work uninterrupted.

How it improves your focus at work: Ideally suited for those who want to concentrate on performing one particular project as it is equipped with peripheral you keep in front of you not to lose track of time.

Upon tasks completion, the tracked hours are categorized in diagrams so that you can review the proportions of time you allocate on certain activities.

Brain.fm

The reason to try Brain.fm is to help your brain activate its abilities including the ability to focus, relax, study, and sleep.

What is beautiful about this app is the opportunity to listen to 10-minute music sessions tailored to your needs and taste that shifts you from the 'under-focus' to 'super-focus' mode.

You choose the answers to the suggested questions, and it creates the playlists based on your requirements.

How it improves your focus at work: It carves out that highly needed time that you will devote just to addressing the needs of you brain in the domain of work-life balance.

Once you achieve the harmonious state of mind, your ability to focus will improve considerably.

HazeOver

We are wired to immediately react to experiences that are potentially threatening, exciting, or promising something new.

So, to avoid dissolving your focus on multiple windows containing distracting information, apply HazeOver that will dim the background in a click. This way, you will focus on the text or code or graphics that is your current top priority.

How it improves your focus at work: It automatically highlights the front window and helps you get rid of distractions.

When you have a lots of apps running on the screen at the same time, you rob yourself of focus. In addition, it has configurable options that you can use to set your own preferences for more focused work.

TimeOut

To avoid any time and, hence, financial losses, it is important to organize not only work time but breaks as well.

The best way to recharge energy and re-calibrate your mental focus is to change the type for activity because taking a break can encourage our creativity and replenish the ability to concentrate.

How it improves your focus at work: TimeOut makes a big difference in enabling efficient time management and keeping focus on top priority tasks.

In addition, timely breaks prevent over-straining your eyesight. Besides, this break time reminder works in the background and at the same time its wide functionality places this software into the category of highly responsive apps.

Flowstate

It is a radical solution, no doubt. But it works like miracle, especially for writers who stumble on writing block. All you need to do is to set the time on 5, 15, or 30 min, and then launch a flow session.

How it improves your focus at work: If you decide to quit writing or stop typing for longer than five seconds, the results will be lost.

The idea behind is entering the state of flow confirmed in the context of recent research in neuroscience on focus, retention of concentration and the brain networks as a highly productive mode of work.

ClickUp

When it comes to focus, play it safe and choose the proven champions like ClickUp, which has a lot of options for creating a smooth workflow regardless of where you work, an office or home.

It is a productivity platform offering individuals and teams all the features of a sophisticated task and time and project manager.

How it improves your focus at work: You get tasks easily arranged by grouping them into different lists.

Besides, you can enable customized options that will help you operate on task management without extra effort and set statuses of your choice not to lose track of the project at hand.

Add to it an impressive list of available integrations, and you will get ubiquitous software to stay focused.

Bidsketch

This app functionality pertains to a specific niche of professionals that deal with creating proposals.

Bidsketch suits any freelancer or consultant as it guarantees to make their client proposals highly efficient and, moreover, ensure the feedback from the customers.

How it improves your focus at work: This straightforward proposal creator lets build a proposal from scratch and send it to the client in an hour.

Bidsketch keeps track of every proposal you send and sends notifications upon viewing it by a client, which shifts your work to a new level of focus and productivity: clients instantly approve and sign or decline your proposal.

Clarizen

It is a full-fledged tool for work collaboration and project management.

Keeping all the documents and information you need for handling team and tasks in one place not only saves you tons of time but improves your focus significantly due to minimizing efforts you take on decision-making.

How it improves your focus at work: It will help you assist you in planning all your initiatives and streamlining the project management process with using the ready templates for reports on any work item.

You can accomplish tasks stress-free: whatever number of projects you juggle with, no losses on time, resources and focus on priorities.

Wrike

Wrike is the software that brings a bunch of solutions in one tool. It is designed to direct your attention to that very field that mostly requires your focus now.

It can deliver fast results in task management in terms of effective goal-setting, scheduling, and team collaboration.

In addition to basic features, it introduces the users to advanced features of extra fast communication pertaining to initiating the project: the client just fills in the project description and the team can create all the necessary specs.

How it improves your focus at work: Managing time, tasks, teams and projects with the complex workflow is a challenge but with a tool that incorporates multiple options for tracking the progress, team leaders will not lose focus and realize the goals one at a time.

Teamwork

One of the proven ways to stay focused is to keep agile, and one of the tools that is designed to support Agile methodologies is Teamwork.

It features collaboration channel, Gantt Charts for improved productivity, milestones tracking, and workflow full cycle management. It makes your work organized without extra effort.

How it improves your focus at work: Within its simple but informative interface, you get the overview of all the tasks at hand.

On the left there is a menu you can use as a road map for reaching the necessary destination. And on the right you get the news of the upcoming tasks, feed of the project performed (activated in the real-time mode).

This set of features enable your team to work in sync and not get overwhelmed with detail.

Mavenlink

It is a service packed with the innovative solutions for project management, effective teamwork, resource planning and finance tracking.

It enables project performers and supervisors not to lose focus by keeping easy access to indexes signaling of business goal achievements alongside with everyday activities the team is engaged in real-time mode.

How it improves your focus at work: Probably it will be most appreciated by big-sized teams and their managers in case they require a tool that would deliver multiple solutions to challenges within project performance.

Practically, it is one of the best project management suites in terms of creating accountability on any business decision the manager takes.

Concluding Thought

As hard as it may seem at times to tame wandering mind and capture focused vision, we still claim that staying focused is a productive habit that is worth every effort you invest into developing, especially with the offers the tech solutions market provides currently.

Among a big number of productivity software, the best apps you can choose for addressing the focus issues are:

• site blockers
• time trackers
• task managers
• project managers
• meditation apps
• advanced break time reminders
• productivity platforms.

In the list above, we give a review of the top app recommendations for concentration and focus that will assist you in creating the optimal digital environment for your work while not over-bloating it with extra options.