Tools That Help You Stay Focused While Working

The modern workplace environment is filled with numerous distractions that are specifically designed to hijack your cognitive focus in the most effective way possible. The very technology you use to accomplish your responsibilities such as web browsers, cloud collaboration tools, and smartphone keychains are the primary entry points for all of them. Multibillion dollar algorithms are programmed to deliberately manipulate your human brain by engaging it in the loop of infinite scroll and constant real-time alerts.

Complete reliance on self-control and raw willpower to fend off digital distractions is doomed to become ineffective quickly. In order to ensure that you will be able to allocate your mental resources towards efficient work on complex projects, it is necessary to build up an automated technical fortress. Top standard tools are engineered to create behavioral friction, silence your surrounding, and make you commit to working on only one task at a time.

1. Technical Website Blockers and App Friction (The Focus Walls)

As soon as you face temporary challenges during work, your brain immediately starts craving for a quick dopamine boost to relieve stress. Without any technical constraints, this mechanism leads to compulsive behavior of opening new tabs for scanning entertaining content. Website blockers and app frictions help you to resist the temptation effectively by blocking certain sites from your browsing experience temporarily.

Cold Turkey: Recognized worldwide as one of the most extreme website and application blockers. Cold Turkey gives you a chance to block particular websites, games installed locally on your computer, or even the entire internet for some period of time. Special “Lock” mode is purposely designed to be unbreakable; you won’t be able to switch it off no matter what by closing the app or rebooting your device.

Freedom: One of the greatest multi-platform focus apps ever invented which allows you to sync blocked domains simultaneously across all devices (computer, tablet, and smartphone). Creating particular custom schedules (blocking all social networks and news pages from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM each working day, for example) helps you to avoid transferring urges to browse from one gadget to another.

2. Gamified and Structural Interval Timers (The Momentum Builders)

Keeping your concentration focused for hours is completely opposite to natural mechanisms in our brain. This is why maintaining vigilance throughout long periods is nearly impossible to accomplish. Structuring your working sessions in short but efficient bursts of activity is an excellent strategy of avoiding procrastination while guaranteeing you sufficient breaks to regain energy.

Forest: Very effective and gamified productivity app that helps you overcome smartphone addiction problem. Whenever you are ready to focus on important things, you simply plant a seed and set a timer in the game. The more concentrated you are, the more you grow a beautiful tree. If you break the focus by leaving the app to browse or chat, the seed will instantly wither. This way, your focus blocks build up a unique forest.

Be Focused: Sleek and minimalistic Pomodoro timer built specially for professionals who value a neat interface. The main peculiarity of Be Focused is dividing any task into classic twenty-five minute sprints followed by obligatory five minute breaks. Not to mention customization options that allow you to modify interval length, track completed goals, and add tasks straight from the interface.

3. Auditory Conditioning and Soundscapes (The Acoustic Shields)

Various noises from your surrounding environment compete for attracting your subconscious attention all the time. Listening to any kind of music with lyrics may lead to your linguistic processing centers being unintentionally hijacked by the lyrics, making your brain slower in comprehending texts and analyzing data.

Brain.fm: Innovative background music platform based on neural science. As opposed to traditional ambient sounds and music, Brain.fm implements patent audio technology of embedding unique rhythms to stimulate brainwaves and guide them to desired frequency ranges in order to achieve complete focus state within fifteen minutes.

Noisli: Exceptional and highly personalized background noise machine which is perfect for creating your own auditory insulation zone. With Noisli, you can work as a sound designer and create a mix of various sounds such as rain falling, lightning, wind, birds singing in forest or coffee shop hums.

Quick Scan Focus Optimization Matrix

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. Should I leave all those distracting tools active for my job?

If your occupation requires you to constantly monitor certain online channels for instant messaging (such as Slack or MS Teams), try to minimize distraction impact by properly configuring your apps settings. Filter notifications of those applications to show you alerts exclusively on direct or time-critical mentions and projects. Moreover, change your status in a way that would clearly indicate others that you are in the focus session.

2. Is it safe to override blocker apps like Cold Turkey?

To prevent you from breaking a focus session easily, Cold Turkey is purposely designed to be un-breakable. The best way of preventing this problem initially is using the special feature called exceptions list or whitelisting particular web domains. This way, you still have access to essential apps (business-related, communication and corporate servers) in case of any work emergencies.

3. How to choose between brain-fm and regular background noises?

This depends on your needs. White, pink, and brown noise machines are perfectly designed to block sudden and unexpected noise disturbances such as a dog barking. Brain.fm works great when you want to get rid of your inner mind wandering and activate your brain to achieve the flow state. Rhythms and modulations embedded into this music are made for this purpose.

4. Does running several background programs reduce my computer’s efficiency?

Absolutely not. Websites blockers, timers, and sounds are designed to run as system processes consuming minimum amount of computer resources (CPU usage and RAM layout). This means that your device remains highly productive regardless of whether you are doing complex calculations, coding or compiling any type of code.