{"id":116639,"date":"2016-01-26T23:04:47","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T23:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/01\/26\/focus-tools\/"},"modified":"2016-01-26T23:04:47","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T23:04:47","slug":"focus-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/01\/26\/focus-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"Focus Tools"},"content":{"rendered":"

So as someone with more than a bit of ADD i\u2019ve picked up a number of tools to help me focus and get to work, and I thought I\u2019d share:<\/p>\n

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  1. The Pomodoro Method<\/a> – This is a way of narrowing your focus and breaking \u00a0your time into manageable chunks. Traditionally it\u2019s 25 minutes of work followed by a 5 minute break, then a 15 minute break after 4 sets. I generally do 15-5 because my focus can be short, but I find this is a great way to stay on task with something. Even 10 minute spurts can be useful. Which leads me to…<\/li>\n
  2. Timers – your phone has a timer (you can ask Siri to set one), there\u2019s a million on the internet. If I don\u2019t want to do something (cleaning<\/a>) or need to sit down and write a paragraph or a fic or a paper, a ten minute timer is my best friend. My unofficial motto is\u00a0\u201cI can do anything for ten minutes\u201d<\/li>\n
  3. FocusWriter <\/a>– It\u2019s free. And the simple thing it does is take over your entire screen real estate. You can minimize, but there\u2019s no making it smaller. When I \u00a0need to really focus on writing, this blocks out everything, especially if I\u2019ve turned off IM notifications.<\/li>\n
  4. NowDoThis<\/a> – This website is my favorite to-do list. I like lists, but tend to get overwhelmed if I see a whole bunch of stuff that needs doing. What this does is, once you\u2019ve put in your list (one item per line), it only shows you one at a time. So instead of seeing 15 things I need to do, I see one thing. And when that\u2019s done I see one more thing. It helps narrow my focus to one thing at a time instead of doing a little bit of everything.<\/li>\n
  5. MyNoise<\/a>\u00a0– Also free, though you can donate, this is my go to place if I need some noise to block out the world. I like combining coffee shop, rain and traffic sometimes when I\u2019m writing. Or lately i\u2019ve just been using the Rain magic generator (you have to have donated to use the magic generators, but it\u2019s $5)<\/li>\n
  6. Reminders – I\u2019ve only recently started using this on my iPhone, but damn if it isn\u2019t helpful. So if I remember when I\u2019m going to sleep that I want to do something in the morning, I can pick up my phone and tell Siri to remind me at 8am of X. It\u2019s supposed to be able to remind you of things when you leave the house but I haven\u2019t quite got the hang of that.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So as someone with more than a bit of ADD i\u2019ve picked up a number of tools to help me focus and get to work, and I thought I\u2019d share: The Pomodoro Method – This is a way of narrowing your focus and breaking \u00a0your time into manageable chunks. Traditionally it\u2019s 25 minutes of work … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “Focus Tools”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[67,14124,10377,126],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}