Two apps that can weirdly help you stay focused.

If you're anything like me, you find it easier to dive into a task that truly gets your mind going and excites you to be in the process of making something. An example for me would be creating a new website for a company I enjoy, editing a batch of photos from a fun trip, editing a cool video I shot, or creating a document that sets up a system of operations for a certain aspect of business.

All these examples I can waste away in. I can spend hours working and not be distracted until my brain starts to turn to mush for the day.

However, there are those tasks that take time and focus that aren't so easy to complete.

For that, I have found two apps that weirdly and truly help you stay laser focused until the task at hand is complete.

Those apps are brain.fm and endel.io.

Feel free to go download either right now and get to work! However, for those who need to know why they work, let me try to put it into Laymen's terms.

How It Works

You may or may not have heard of something called binaural beats.

Binaural beats, to my understanding, are sound waves that when played into your ears, help align your brain with certain functions or "states of mind", we'll say.

In the past I have seen these binaural beats used to help with lucid dreaming, meditation, mood setting, etc.

These beats are usually played in the background of music and or sounds of nature like rain, waves crashing, etc.

They are noticeable but not annoying and you sort of naturally tune them out as you begin to work.

Whether they truly work or not, I really don't know. But I can tell you the apps above have helped produce some of my greatest stretches of batched work.

Because of my love for music, it is very hard for me to listen to music while I work because my brain starts to try and decipher what lyrics mean and how certain instruments were used while I try to work. These two apps play music and sounds that don't distract me in that way and help to provide just the right amount of white noise to tune out all outside sounds and distractions.

I also highly recommend getting yourself a pair of noise-cancelling headphones to further tune out the world around you to allow your brain to fall into the correct rhythm of focus and finally get stuff done!

Conclusion

So, try it out. Both apps have free trials and you can obviously ditch them if they don't work for you. I can't really explain it entirely, but they have worked for me and I will continue to use them when I need to focus and dive into a project.

P.S. I’m sure YouTube and Spotify have some options as well, if you want the free free free route.