Mindful Tech Coach

Today I'm reviewing an app for Android and Apple devices called Forest, which is a great example of the growing range of apps that try to change your tech habits and give you more mindfulness and less screentime. On a related note, I was at the checkout line at the pharmacy the other day and I picked up this Time Magazine special edition about Mindfulness, and it has two good articles about digital distraction and mindfulness. The first one called "Devices Mess with Your Brain," by Markham Heid, quotes MIT neuroscience professor Earl Miller on what's called the "switch cost" to your brain of of changing your focus. And the second article, called "...So give yourself an I-Break" by Ellen Seidman, actually has a lot to do with our app review today. One of Seidman's recommendations is what she calls getting a "digital babysitter," and that's one way to describe what apps like Forest can do for you.

As we talked about in my previous podcast episode, on unplugging from Facebook, unplugging from your your usual smartphone habits can take many forms, and if you want to design your own approach, that episode, plus the article 16 Steps to Turn Your Scattered Smartphone into a Mindfulness Machine, can help you use your existing apps and phone settings to help you unplug. But it can help to not reinvent the wheel, and instead have an app that is designed to help do the work of unplugging for you--and it does one of the fundamental things I recommend in the Mindfulness Machine article, which is to use your phone as a focus timer.

But what is the Forest App exactly? At one level, it's a smartphone game. But unlike Angry Birds or Candy Crush, Forest a game you play by successfully staying off of your phone. And at another level it's a tool for timing and measuring your ability to stay off your phone for focused blocks of time.

The app is called Forest because the game is to plant a virtual tree, that takes, for example, ten minutes to grow, and as long as you can stay off your phone long enough, the tree will finish growing and be added to your on-screen forest for today, but if you get back on your phone too fast, the tree withers and dies.

Now to tell you a little more about what I like about this app, let me explain what you can do with it before, during, and after your focused unplugging time.

Before you unplug, the app has a start screen with a button that will plant your tree, and that will start a timer, which you can set for anything from ten minutes to two hours.

Next, during the unplugging,Once you plant the tree, the app moves to push you away from your phone. One of my favorite features is how, while the work timer counts down and the tree grows on-screen, the app also flashes messages to you on-screen, like "stop phubbing!" and " and go back to your work!" And in the paid version of the app, you can even write your own custom motivational messages to yell at yourself.
The other important feature that Forest offers while you're focusing is audio to listen to while you're focusing. Fittingly for Forest app, it includes a rainforest sounds loop, and as you plan more trees, you can earn access to to additional ambient sounds like a Paris Café. And as someone who listens to a lot of music and podcasts on my phone too, I appreciated that I could also listen to audio on other apps while planting a tree, as long as I didn't exit the app to do so.

And so as I'm sure you're guessing, the tree-planting countdown can end in one of two ways. Either you stay off your phone until the app tells you that your tree has finished growing,, or, you jump back on your phone too early, and your tree dies a tragic early death. Either way, the app will give you credit for the amount of time you stayed focused, and add the living or dead tree to your on-screen forest for the day. I also like how you can tag your focused time blocks with what you were doing, and you can then see graphs day-by-day of what you were focused on and for how long.
And you also get points for how long you focused, which you can use to unlock audio tracks or more fun kinds of trees to plant.

There are two other things the app lets you do when you've finished growing a tree: First you can share it on social media, although personally I couldn't get that feature to work because I kept fighting with my Android screen overlay settings. Second, the app also lets you set a timer between 1 and 60 minutes to take a break from focusing, which will let you do anything on your phone and then will buzz when the break is done.
And one final cool thing that the Forest app does is it lets you donate to a real-world tree-planting nonprofit, which currently is listed as Trees for the Future, which is a group that works with farmers to plant trees in five countries in Africa.

So, what's my overall review of the Forest app?
I recommend it for anyone who wants to do more focused work and use your phone as a focus timer.
The app has a lot of pluses. First, it's a well-designed app that helps make the abstract idea of focusing away from your phone into a fun game. It has some great features but it keeps things simple where it counts, and even the free version with ads is pretty good at not distracting you.
Second, the fact that it has both a focus timer and a break timer works very well with time-management approaches I personally use like the Pomadoro Technique. And third, I also like that this app does so well, walking a very careful line between pulling you in and pushing you away. It's the same challenge that all of us, including me on my podcast, are trying to make work doing that jiu-jitsu of using our technology itself to teach us to unplug, has to strike that balance, and I love how well this app succeeds in doing that for me.

My only potential minus for the ap is ideally I'd like more of a one-click way of re-upping my time and planting another tree from the "you're finished" page--what you have to do instead is press a back button, then on the free version, close a full-screen ad, and then you get back to the page to plant another tree and start the timer. But that's not a big deal and I really recommend trying this app on for size if you're looking for help staying off your phone while you're doing other things.

I hope this review's been helpful. Ultimately for me it's always less about the exact tools you use, and more about what kinds of change they make possible in our lives. But the right tools can make a big difference, and I'm always looking to share them with my listeners and clients. So If there are any apps you'd recommend, let me know. As always, you can reach me on the contact page at mindfultechcoach.com. For more information about forest, go to the Forest app web page or the Apple and Android stores.

Copyright 2017 Mindful Tech Coach, all rights reserved.

A step-by-step how-to on unplugging from Facebook

For the blog post version of this post, go to https://www.mindfultechcoach.com/2017/07/20/episode-10-7-steps-to-unplug-from-facebook/

Links mentioned in the show:

Episode 5(and Blog post): 5 Steps to Take Stock of Your Digital Habits

https://www.mindfultechcoach.com/2017/06/15/episode-5-five-steps-to-take-stock-of-your-digital-habits/

16 Ways to Turn Your Scattered Smartphone into a Mindfulness Machine https://www.mindfultechcoach.com/2017/03/01/16-ways-to-turn-your-scattered-smartphone-into-a-mindfulness-machine/

Copyright 2017 Mindful Tech Coach, all rights reserved.

For more, go to www.mindfultechcoach.com

Copyright 2017 Mindful Tech Coach, all rights reserved.

Samuel Hedlund discusses the 2017 Mindful Life Conference and the Muse headband with friend Tim Ly. Tim Ly is an experienced information technology professional who is now developing his interest in mindfulness, nutrition, and neuroplasticity.

For an extended clip from this interview, sign up at www.mindfultechcoach.com

A quick how-to episode on taking stock of your tech habits.--Text article version of these tips available at http://www.mindfultechcoach.com

 Most people jump to conclusions about what's going on in their digital habits, smartphone and social media addiction. Instead of rushing into problem-solving mode, start by noticing patterns without trying to change anything. Steps 1. Watch your habits 2. Write down your habits 3. notice what you're trying to do in your day. 4.Notice what's getting in the way. 5. Notice what's going on in your mind and body.

How do you find good news? How can we make online friendships meaningful? How do you balance living offline and online? How do you make fun memes retweeted by people like actress Rashida Jones or Justin Trudeau's chief of staff? Find out as we talk with Erin Ruberry, a Washington, D.C.-based writer and editor. She was previously managing blog editor at The Huffington Post and a digital producer at Discovery Communications. Erin has a degree in journalism and politics from the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. She's the editor a daily good news newsletter, Kittens and Kindness, and tweets at @erinruberry.

For more information: http://twitter.com/erinruberry

For the show: http://www.mindfultechcoach.com

Bruce Rosenstein is Managing Editor of  Leader to Leader and author of two books, Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way and Living in More than One World.

For more information on the show, go to http://www.mindfultechcoach.com

Klia Bassing, founder of Visit Yourself at Work, leads a simple mindfulness exercise and discussion. For more information on today's guest, http://www.visityourself.net

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