Are you obsessed with your Smartphone? Addicted to it? Well, it’s not something you’re proud of, but alas, it’s true!
Millions of people throughout the world are having a hard time staying away from their smartphones even when they are working or studying.
Psychologists can relate this kind of behavior with phone addiction very often. Such behavior can also adversely affect personal, professional, and social life as people nowadays tend to fiddle with their mobile devices instead of enjoying quality time with loved ones.
However, there is a productivity app called Forest: Stay focused that can help minimize phone addiction. With a simple mission to help users “stay focused” and “be present”, it helps you to stay focused through the use of a unique self-affirmation method. The concept of this app is simple: stay away from your phone to allow your tree to grow.
By spending time away from smartphones, users grow virtual trees and earn coins, which can then be saved up and used to help plant real trees in five countries in Africa — Cameroon, Kenya, Senegal, Uganda, and Tanzania.
When you start to run the app, you will be prompted to plant a seedling. The seedling will gradually blossom into a full-grown tree in the next half an hour. Henceforth, you must not touch your phone within the allotted time to allow the tree to grow.
If you use your smartphone inside the given 30-minute mark to check notifications, make calls, or open any app, then your budding tree will die. It will be counted as a failure on your part and will be listed according to your daily stats.
Your tree will wither if you cannot defy the temptation of using your phone and leave the app. Well, the sense of achievement and responsibility will ultimately encourage you to stay away from your smartphone, and help you make better use of your time. The app also gently shames you if you don’t successfully complete your goal, which is apparently the component I’ve always been missing.
The best thing about the Forest app is that as you use the app, you will develop a certain kind of fondness for your tree. So the next time you plant a seedling, you will become more motivated to allow it to grow. This will minimize your phone addiction and will improve your focus and productivity.
Forest: Stay focused app is available on Google Play and Apple store; having with 103 MB file size, 4.6 average reviews, and more than10 a million downloads on android.
