Your phone distracting you often? We might have a solution!
Before you start reading this article, let us start it with a small experiment. Try reading this whole article without being distracted, especially by your phone. If you are reading this on your actual mobile device, try not to open any other notifications that pop up while you are reading it. If you are like most people out there, chances are, that you will not be able to complete this article within the recommended reading time.
Is smartphone distraction really a thing?
Research and data points have shown that smartphone distraction is growing worse and rapidly in recent years. Unlike other technological advances like TV, radios, cellular phones and more; smartphones have really changed our landscape in how we get things done. This is especially true among teenagers and millennials, where they find it very difficult to concentrate on a particular task without being distracted by their phones. Our time spent on social networks, entertainment and shopping sites are on the average of two hours per day. This can seriously hinder our productivity at the workplace, study time during exams or even simple tasks like reading a newspaper.
Notifications from shopping apps like new offers, news notifications, notifications for likes, comments on our posts on social media can easily take our attention from the task we are doing, making workers unproductive. Data points from analytics firms like Flurry has found that people are spending more than 5 hours per day on their smartphones and the time spent in mobile apps have increased 69% in a single year in the US. Another survey from CareerBuilder found that hiring managers believe employees are extremely unproductive and most of the managers find the reason to be smartphones. Yet another study by Universities of Würzburg and Nottingham Trent found that people are 26% more productive without smartphones at their workplace.
The top smartphone OS manufacturers, Google and Apple have acknowledged this as a problem, which is why they have introduced features in their latest operating systems to minimize the screen-time on our devices with useful reports on how we use our devices. Some companies such as the “Light” phone have gone even further to curb smartphone addiction/distraction by limiting the features on the device to a complete minimum. There have also been several apps trying to address this and they have been well received by the public, which clearly shows that users need help in controlling their smartphone distraction.
Most of us aren’t going to get a new smartphone just to keep ourselves focused on a task and while many of us have spent a lot of money on smartphones already, it doesn’t make sense to get a new one. And having an advanced smartphone can be very useful for doing various tasks like taking a photo, getting directions and much more. The only downside is that these also can distract us easily with its rich display and sound.
We at Zydesoft, believe that if we could control these distractions, the smartphone we own already can become an important tool in keeping us productive.
Enter Focus.
Focus is an Android Launcher app, for people who want to get things done. It eliminates all the elements that might distract you from your work.
The app is specifically designed to be minimalistic with no colours (black/white) as it can greatly reduce the temptation to use the smartphone. App developers use beautiful colours for their icons to get our attention and use their app more often, which is why we have completely removed all the icons and replaced them with text. Your home screen shows the time and your current task that you might want to focus on.
Zero-distraction mode
This unique setting makes it difficult for you to access apps such as social networking, shopping apps, and custom apps that are configured under Zero-distraction apps in the settings. We do not completely stop you from using these apps, instead, the app list randomizes the order of these apps in the list to make it more difficult to access them.
In-built Task List
The app comes with its own task list in which you can create tasks with start and end times and even make them repetitive. The current task subtly shows up on the home screen with the amount of time remaining for that task.
Focus mode
This is probably the most important feature of the Focus Launcher. If the focus setting is enabled, you can tap on the current task visible on the home screen to go into focus mode. This setting shuts down any distraction that your phone might involve in. By silencing all notifications, calls, messages and much more, you can concentrate on your task and get it done.
We at Zydesoft are committed to making this product as friendly and feature-rich as possible. We are open to any feedback you might have. We are planning to launch this app in open-beta as soon as possible, stay tuned to this blog post for further updates. Also, let us know what you think about the app below.
