The best apps for focus and concentration

In today's fast-paced world, staying focused can be a challenge. We're constantly bombarded with information and face ever-increasing demands on our time and energy. If you are one of those who find it difficult to stay concentrated, fortunately, there are several mobile apps that can help boost your concentration and productivity. Try out some of the apps mentioned in this article.

Endel

Personalized soundscapes for focus and relaxation

Endel is an app that generates personalized soundscapes that adapt to the time of day, weather, location, and even the user's heart rate. Users can select their specific needs for the app, such as enhancing focus, relaxation, productivity, falling asleep, or getting active. Thanks to its sound compositions, users can work towards achieving their goals. The app's creators claim that based on research, it can enhance focus by seven times and reduce stress levels by 3.6 times. You can try it out and download it here.

Evernote

For your notes

Evernote is a popular option and comes in handy for staying organized. This app helps increase your productivity by creating notes, to-do lists, and reminders for your tasks. You can even add audio messages, files, and images to your notes. It provides a simple and clear way to track the details you need to stay on top of your game. Evernote offers a free version, however, the Premium version includes advanced features, such as document scanning and handwritten text detection (available for several languages). You can download it for iOS and Android here.

Todoist

For organizing your to-do lists

Todoist is another popular app for organizing and managing tasks or projects. With this app, you can set reminders to prioritize your to-do list or help build new positive habits. The app even provides insights into your productivity. Todoist syncs with many popular apps (such as Slack and Gmail), interacts with smart speakers (such as Alexa) and is accessible on your computer, mobile phone, and many other devices. You can find it for Android and iOS here.

Hours

For a work-life balance

If you’re looking for help organizing your work or business, Hours is a very useful tool and could be just what you’re looking for. With this app you can easily record the amount of time you dedicate to a project or client. It is very intuitive. Simply press the play button in the app when starting a new task and note what you are doing. When you're finished, press stop to end the timer. You can group data and export your activity reports to Excel for further analysis. Download it now for Android and iOS.

Strides

For focusing on your well-being

Strides is an app designed to help you control your habits, good or bad, such as working out or quitting smoking. It effectively tracks your progress toward the goals you set in the app, keeping you accountable and motivated with a variety of progress reminders. Strides has over 150 pre-defined templates for goal setting, but you can also create your own. Easily monitor all your habits from a dashboard to ensure you’re staying on track. Strides is available only for iOS. However, you can check out these similar Android apps: Habit Tracker and Loop.

FocusList

Pomodoro method in action

FocusList is a neat app that uses the Pomodoro method, which sets the goal of completing 1 task in 25 minutes. With FocusList you can work through your to-do list using the timer, which helps you focus on one specific task at a time. It’s now broadly accepted that focusing on one specific task, instead of multitasking, within a set period of time increases effectiveness and efficiency. Use it to plan your daily activities and you will be able to estimate how long it will take you to complete everything. It includes 5-minute breaks after each section, intended to give you time to refocus on the next task. The Retrospective function lets you view your stats and track progress over time. It's only available for iOS, but there are similar programs for Android such as Pomotodo.