Forest
How much do mobile devices distract you at work? Do you beat the average office employee, who—according to a 2017 survey from Robert Half—spends 56 minutes per day using a cell phone at work for nonwork activities?
If the call of your cell phone eats into your productivity, try out the Forest app. Available for $1.99 in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, it's designed to help you put down your phone and focus on what's important.
Whenever you want to focus, you can open the app and plant a virtual tree. As time passes, you can watch the tree grow on screen, from a sprout to a sapling to a full-on timber tower. But use caution—if you leave the app before you finish the time you planned to focus, giving in to distractions, your tree will die.
Over time, you can approximate how much time you spend focusing by watching the app build your forest. Each time you complete a tree, you add to your collection.
One more interesting aspect of this app is that it does good for the environment. Its creators partner with a real tree-planting organization to put more trees in the ground. So far, the organization has planted more than 246,000 trees.
