While to-do lists are a great way of keeping your life organized, more often than not, the list of things to do can get out of hand and be overwhelming. Around 41% of items on to-do lists never get completed. So what can you do otherwise to keep yourself productive? Focus Bear and Motion might have the answer to that question.

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Focus Bear

Focus Bear isn’t a todo app — instead it helps you stay focused so you can get the things in your to do list done without distractions. It also helps you get into the right headspace for productivity by guiding you through your morning habits and reminding you to take breaks throughout the day. Here’s how it does it:

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Use Super Pomodoro Mode to Get More Done

Nothing compares to a distraction-free work session to get things done on time. Quite often, 20 minutes of singleminded focus on a task can achieve more than several hours of task switching. Focus Bear comes with “super pomodoro mode” where you go straight into consecutive pomodoro blocks after you finish your evening routine.

During the focus blocks, all distractions are blocked. If you open a website that isn’t in your list of productive URLs, Focus Bear will leap in and stop you from getting off track.

You tell the app which websites and apps are productive for the type of work you’re doing. You can have as many different “Focus Types” as you like.

Get into the right headspace for productivity with a morning routine

Ever tried rolling straight out of bed and going straight to work? It’s quite jarring and not a recipe for a productive day. Even worse is lying in bed scrolling through Tiktok until just before you start work. A far better way to start the day is to begin with some healthy habits: meditate, go for a run, journal, eat a healthy breakfast/drink bulletproof coffee and don’t eat until the afternoon — it’ll be different for everyone but it rarely involves scrolling through screens.

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A morning routine like that can seem out of reach but Focus Bear aims to make it possible. The first step is blocking distracting tech (Instagram, Youtube, TikTok, work emails etc.) first thing. Focus Bear works on your smart phone and your computer. Instead of mindless scrolling, you’ll do a mindfulness session. The app guides you through each activity one at a time.

During each habit, distractions are blocked. You can embed relevant Youtube videos to make it more fun (e.g. follow along to a HIIT/yoga video).

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Take Productive Breaks to Maintain Workflow

Timely breaks can help in keeping you in a productive mood. Instead of getting to 2pm and wanting to go to sleep, you’ll maintain a consistent energy level throughout the day by taking active breaks every 20 minutes to stand up and stretch or even do a set of pull-ups.

The app can tell if you’re on a video call and won’t interrupt you for a break during that time. If you’re in the office and it’d cause a stir if you busted out a set of pull-ups, you can turn on Office Mode which will give you break activities that are appropriate to do around other people.

Optimise Your Performance through Analytics

After the end of the day, Focus will give your daily report, including all the tasks you have finished, what distracted you, and the progress of any activity logs you have been recording.

With the activity log, you can track any data you want: you might want to track how many Squats you do during the active breaks or track your mood and energy level. You can look at graphs of each activity to analyse your progress.

Motion

With over 20,000 users, Motion can be your ultimate management tool without needing to manage anything at all. The app offers the following features:

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Let AI Plan Your Day

Motion uses advanced AI (Artificial Intelligence) to plan your schedules depending on priorities, deadline date, start date, working hours, and other factors. If the schedule involves a team, Motion will hide all your personal tasks from the public unless you choose to do otherwise.

Using the meeting assistant, you can create a pre-filled message with the timeframe by only selecting the time and date.

Forget Re-planning and Tracking Priorities

If you have any unfinished tasks, Motion will reschedule them for you. So you don’t have to go through the hassle of re-planning them. You also don’t have to worry about the priority works and track them manually, as the app does it for you based on the priority you choose when creating them.

Final Words

For anyone with a busy daily schedule that requires constant planning and re-planning, Motion can be a godsend app. It is very feature-rich and manages your schedule and priorities, and lets you focus on doing the tasks at hand.

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Focus Bear is the perfect partner to Motion. When the AI in Motion suggests that you should work on a certain task, activate a relevant Focus Mode in Focus Bear to help you stay on track. Block out your morning routine in your calendar so that people can’t book meetings with you via the Motion calendar while you’re doing your habits. With their powers combined, Motion and Focus Bear are an excellent force multiplier for productivity and habit formation.

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This blog post was first published in Medium