Life pills us in many different directions and during our day, we often find our attention-getting directed to multiple people, places, and things. Sometimes those distractions come at us all at once, and sometimes they just come in at a steady trickle. The biggest distractions, however, are the self-imposed ones. In those instances,
It is essential, as a good and responsible writer, to understand the causes of many of those self-imposed distractions and defeat them at their sources. That is where the six apps and tools on our list come in. They help writers – and people of all other description – manage, compartmentalize, and beat the distractors that lead to procrastination. Let’s take a quick look at each.
1) Focus@Will
Focus@Will harnesses the power of music and sound to help train the brain to be more focused. When distractions are plentiful and not always easy (or possible) to eliminate, this app could be the answer. Simply plug in some earbuds and select from several virtual environments. If a busy coffee shop is more conducive to productivity than your living room, plug in and get the stimulation needed to keep plugging away.
2) EssayPro
Need answers to common questions about writing? Need some advice on how to advance a concept or idea? Do you need help getting specific ideas down on paper? EssayPro is much more than an app. It’s a full-service professional writing agency. They specialize in academic writing, but they also provide a comprehensive offering of writing services from proofreading and editing to full-scale content creation. Whether it’s a blog post or a fully-researched and written philosophy paper, they have the resources to deliver.
3) Mindly
No one aspires to – or even means to – become a procrastinator. Sometimes it’s just a lack of mental organization that leads to it. If you’ve been putting off challenging or unappealing writing tasks, Mindly could be a helpful tool. The app helps to organize thoughts and lists into mind maps rather than just checklists or to-dos. It can even be used for mapping out stories or organizing the information that is going to go into your big paper.
4) Zero Willpower
Our phones are always within reach, and when we’re in procrastination mode, the temptation to give a quick look at our social media pages or emails can be overwhelming. For those who don’t possess the willpower to say no, there’s an app that does it for them.
With Zero Willpower, this website blocker, the determined writer can block out as many distractors as he or she wants. By default, the app blocks the most popular social media sites. Any other pages deemed time wasters that keep writers from staying focused and on-point can be added manually to the user’s list. There are separate apps for desktop and phone, and we suggest using both.
5) Write or Die
An extreme title for an extreme app – Write or Die works with writers, students, and anyone upon whom all manner of subtlety is lost. It produces annoying pictures and sounds all designed to get the writer to finish up before being subjected to further annoyances.
This is one of the most fun of all the apps on the list for its playful – almost sarcastic – approach to defeating procrastination. Just for the sake of example, users can set the app to Kamikaze mode which deletes all the vowels from an open file if the work isn’t getting done fast enough. Don’t worry… the work is recoverable; it’s all in good fun.
6) Yelling Mom
Keeping one toe at the end of the extreme measure of the anti-procrastination app pool, Yelling Mom is pretty much what the name suggests. When the user schedules a task, there is an almost disturbingly broad selection of obnoxious sounds that can be set as alerts. Annoying – and possibly embarrassing – options include sirens, bells, a referee’s whistle, and much more. Ironically, there is no actual yelling mom option. We’ll defer to your actual mother for that.
Stay Focused
We hope you’ll take the time to have a look at some of the above tools and see if any of them can help curb more procrastination. Remember that, as a writer, your best work is going to flow when you are focused and committed to completing milestones. That means eliminating distractions and developing a better sense of self-discipline. The above tools can all help with both.
