(SCO transition music)
Hi, this is Mike Schmitz,
and welcome to another weekly tip video.
This week we're going to look at using an iOS utility
called Forest to help you eliminate distractions,
and focus on your important work.
Have you ever sat down to work on something
and found yourself distracted by Twitter or Instagram
on your smartphone instead?
That's exactly the problem Forest aims to solve,
by incentivizing you to not touch your phone,
helping you stay focused, be present
and build productive habits.
(SCO transition music)
Okay, so let's open up the Forest app.
And the first time that you run Forest,
it'll walk you through how the app works
through a series of splash screens.
The basic idea behind Forest is that
whenever you want to focus you choose to plant a tree.
You can choose how long you want to focus for,
and during that time period the tree
will be growing in the background.
The catch is that if you leave the app your tree will die.
The more you ignore your smartphone
while Forest is running
and focus on your important work instead,
the larger your forest becomes.
So instead of presenting technical features
that make your work more efficient,
the goal of Forest is to develop solid work patterns
or work habits.
To help you be more present in your daily life.
Okay, so let's tap go to go to the main screen in Forest.
Let's start our first focused work session by tapping
the plant button which is going to start a 25-minute timer.
The 25 minute timer may seem familiar
because that's actually the recommended time period
for what's known as the Pomodoro method,
a productivity framework to help you focus on something
for a short period of time, say 25 minutes.
And then when you're done, you take a 5-minute break.
By using the Pomodoro method and focusing only for a short
period of time, you eliminate a lot of the friction
that's typically associated with sitting
down to do focused work.
The difference with Forest is that it incentivizes
you to stay focused on your work,
because if you leave this application,
it will actually kill the tree that you're planting.
So it gamifies your focus sessions,
because when you go back to look at the forest
and the trees that you planted, you're not going to like
seeing these dead trees sticking out.
So we're gonna let this timer run and as it goes,
the tree in the middle is going to grow
in front of our eyes.
Now we can obviously close the application
or tap the give up button,
but that's going to kill our tree.
We don't wanna do that.
So let's jump ahead here and show you what happens
at the end of this timer.
Okay, so our timer is done.
We get nine seeds and a notification
that our tree has grown.
Now we can go back and look at our Forest view,
but there's a couple other buttons here.
Let's take look at these real quickly.
The pencil icon right here,
this allows us to add a description into our tree.
So maybe we wanna name this SCO
since we were recording the screencast during our session.
And then we can also search or create tags.
Let's just select the work tag here.
All right, and we'll tap Save.
There's a Share button here on the right,
which will open up the share sheet.
We can save an image of our tree if we wanted to.
And the other button here with the alarm clock,
this is to take a timed break.
So again, the Pomodoro default is a 5-minute break
after a 25-minute work session.
So let's start our break timer.
Alright, so again, we've got a timer running,
the difference here is that if we leave the application
right now we're not going to be killing the tree
that we're planting because we're not trying to focus
right now we're taking a break.
Let's jump ahead here again,
and we get a notification when our break is over.
Now it's time to plant a tree and start being focused again.
So let's tap the arrow in the upper left
to go back to the main screen.
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