- Hey, what up guys?
So it is round up time.
Today I'm gonna be
sharing 21 different apps
and tools that, more or less,
force you to get your work done.
Now to be honest right up
front none of these apps
work quite like that creepy
piano in the movie Coraline.
None of them are gonna make
your computer sprout robotic
arms that grab your hands and literally
make them start typing.
But what they do provide
are what I like to call
training wheels for the
brain because as I'm sure
you're well aware left to its own devices
your brain is liable to get
distracted by cat videos
instead of actually doing the work
that you have set out to do.
Now over time and with
practice you can build
your self-discipline and
your ability to focus.
But while you're going
through the early stages
of that process it's useful to use systems
that provide training
wheels, be they in the form
of helpful limitations,
commitment devices,
feedback in reports or
literal drill instructors
with very little regard for
the integrity of your eardrum.
So each of the apps that I'm
gonna share with you today
fits into each one of those categories,
except the last one.
And in fairness I did
go do a search on Fiverr
for affordable drill instructors
but that turned up no results.
So you're on your own if you want to find
your own personal Major Payne.
But before you go looking for one let's go
through these apps starting with those
that fall into the category
of commitment devices.
What exactly is a commitment device?
Well to put things simply
it's anything that creates
a consequence for failing to do the thing
that you've set up to do.
All the tools in this category aim
to make it painful not to do your work
and there are quite a few of these.
Let's start with my favorite
one which is Beeminder.
It is no exaggeration to
say that Beminder is one
of the primary reasons
why I have a successful
YouTube channel today
because back when I started
on YouTube I used it
to commit to publishing
a new video every single week.
Essentially Beeminder allows
you to commit to a goal
either of doing more of
something or less of something
and allows you to put money on the line.
Moreover, it's very nerdy and it's all
about tracking data so
you can hook it up to tons
of different tools including
Apple Health, Strava,
Todoist and IFTTT, which
stands for if this, then that,
which basically allows you to hook it up
to pretty much any service on the planet.
And due to the presence
of all those integrations
the only real limitation
here is your imagination.
And there are tons of
different goals that you can
start putting money on
in order to make sure
that you are more committed
to them in the future.
But to give you one idea,
again, for three entire
years I tracked my blog's
RSS feed and made sure
that I published a new blog
post, a new podcast episode,
and a new YouTube video every single week.
And I had money on the line
so I made sure that I did it.
Now in the same vein
there's another website
called stickK, which
is spelled S-T-I-C-K-K
and it's very similar to Beeminder
though it's a little less nerdy.
As with Beeminder you commit to a goal
and then you create stakes or consequences
in case you fail.
And you can actually put money on the line
though it has fewer charts and graphs
and it's generally a little bit less
statistics-heavy than Beeminder is.
But on the other hand
you can set supporters
who can watch your progress and a referee
who can email every single
time you log progress
and make sure that you
were telling the truth.
Moving on from there we
have an app with a much more
specific purpose called The
Most Dangerous Writing App.
If you, like me, sometimes
have trouble getting started
writing or while you're
writing you have trouble
with your inner critic silencing you
or trying to edit things when you should
just be getting thoughts out of your head
then this is an app that
you might want to use
because once you start a
session with either a time goal
or a word count goal
you have to keep typing.
And if you stop typing for long enough
it completely deletes your work.
Not only that but it
also has a hardcore mode.
If you check this box and start a session
you aren't gonna be able to
see anything on the screen
except for the last letter that you typed
because when you type
letters they flash on screen
but everything else is blurred.
And this, once again,
silences that inner critic,
makes you just get things out
of your head and edit later.
Alright so now let's talk
about the Strides app
and the reason I put this on this list
isn't because it forces you
to work by putting money
on the line on anything
like that but it does
take advantage of what's been
called the Seinfeld Strategy.
The comedian Jerry Seinfeld
is famous for having honed
his joke writing talent
by making sure he wrote
a new joke every single day.
To track his progress he would mark it
off on a calendar on his wall.
And because he could see
that calendar he didn't
want to break the streak.
He had this visual
reminder of his progress
that he didn't want to tarnish.
So this don't break the
streak strategy can be
very powerful because we
humans like to be consistent
in our behavior and we don't want
to see those chains broken.
Now while you could
definitely use a calendar
on your wall to do this that's not an app
so it doesn't belong on this list.
And while you could use
any habit tracking app
in the world to do it as
well because almost all
of them show your streak I do want to give
a specific shout out to
the Strides app because in
that particular app, when
you're creating a goal,
you have the option to create
a goal for your streaks.
So instead of just watching
it count up to infinity
you can actually set
a 30, or 60, or 90-day
streak goal which means
your 30-day challenges
can become that much more official.
Next up we've got coach.me
which used to be called
Lift back when I started
using it as a college student
but now it's called coach.me
because it has a big focus on,
you guessed it, coaching.
Now coach.me does have
a habit tracking app
that's very similar to a
lot of others out there
but what I want to highlight in this video
is their coaching services
because if you were one
of the people who listened to the intro
of this video and did want
your own personal Major Payne,
wanted your own personal drill instructor,
this is probably the closest
that you're going to get
for not a whole lot of money
because they've got personal
coaching services for building new habits
and staying productive
for about 15 bucks a week,
a lot more expensive than
everything else on this list
but if you do want personalized
coaching and you don't have
a friend who can be an
accountability partner
this could be an option.
Of course another option
could be to use the entire
internet as your accountability partner
which is what I've done by essentially
rolling my own commitment
device using Google Sheets.
So a couple years ago
I set a goal for myself
to read 25 pages of
non-fiction every single day
for three months without fail.
And while I did have an
accountability partner
in real life I also wanted
to make my goal public
and I wanted people to be able
to track my progress over time.
So I created a public
facing Google spreadsheet
which tracked the book I was reading
and how many pages I read every single day
and then I made it public on my website
so people could call me
out if I failed to read.
And the last tool that I'm gonna mention
here in the commitment
devices section is something
that you might not have expected.
I'm gonna mention Discord and
or Skype as a commitment device.
Now for those of you
who don't know Discord
is an app that is primarily used by gamers
to chat with either by voice or by text
and it's a very cool app.
In fact we have a college
info geek official Discord
which you can find in the
description down below.
But I'm going to suggest
using the voice chat
feature here to set up what
I like to call a work group.
Back when I was in college
I set up one of these
with a couple of blogger friends
who each lived in different states.
And every once in a while
we would get on Skype,
we'd be on a call but we
wouldn't talk to each other.
We would simply be on
the call and be working
and this was in order to
simulate the experience
of sitting in a room with study buddies
or accountability
partners getting work done
and just getting the motivation
from knowing the other
people were also getting their work done.
So even though I wasn't
physically in the room
with my blogger friends I
knew that on the other line
of that Skype call, even if it was silent,
was somebody who was getting work done.
And that made me more motivated
to do my work, as well.
Category number two on
my list are the apps
that provide what I like to
call helpful limitations,
or to put it another
way, apps that block you
from doing specific things.
And a lot of the apps
on this list are going
to be website and application blockers.
And I did talk a lot
about those in my internet
distractions video so I do recommend going
and watching that for some more in-depth
tips regarding those
but here I'm just going
to recommend them if you
haven't heard about them.
And the first one I have to
talk about is my absolute
favorite website blocker in
the world which is Freedom.
Now there are lots of other apps out there
but Freedom is the only
one that works on all
the platforms that I
use and reliably blocks
everything that is a potential distraction
for me on a daily basis.
Now while Freedom is, by
far, the most convenient
of the website blocking
apps because it allows you
to define all of your blocks in schedules
from a universal dashboard
that goes out to all
of your different devices
it does have a monthly cost
so if you want to pay less money
and maybe have a little more inconvenience
then the following apps
could be good substitutes.
First up, if you're on
a Mac you're gonna want
to get the app SelfControl
which is free and for Mac only.
And if you're on Windows
you're gonna want to go
for FocalFilter which is, again,
free and it is Windows exclusive.
On the iPhone there's an app called
Block Distracting Websites
for about three bucks
though near the end of
this video I'm gonna talk
about a new feature in iOS
that may supersede this app
and make it obsolete so
stick around for that.
And for those of you on
Android there's a free app
called Block Site that
does the same thing.
There is also an app for
Android, iOS and Chrome
called Forest which is not
really a website blocker
but can kind of function
in the same manner.
Forest helps you avoid using
your phone in distracting
ways by allowing you
to grow a tree as long
as you don't exit the app.
If you do, though, you kill the tree.
Same with the Chrome
extension, if you go to any
of the sites on yours on
your black list you're going
to kill that tree that
you could have grown
had you just stayed away
from them during that time.
And, of course, over time
you get to see your progress
in the form of a virtual forest growing up
on your phone or in your browser.
And if you want to keep
that forest nice and healthy
then you are not going to
be distracting yourself.
And in a similar vein to
forest I'm going to mention
literally any Pomodoro app.
Now I debated whether or
not to put Pomodoro apps
on this list because they
really don't explicitly
do anything to force you to do your work
but I just had to add them because they're
so effective for me.
Once I start a Pomodoro
session and I have committed
to doing one single thing
I am so much less likely
to go do anything else but that one task.
And if you want a recommendation
my absolute favorite
Pomodoro app is one called Tide which is
on the iPhone and Android and I like
to actually put it on my phone screen,
put the phone screen on the
desk and leave the screen
on during those Pomodoro
sessions that way I can
actually see the timer the whole time.
Rounding out our section
on helpful limitations
are a couple of apps that help
you write more effectively
starting with Cold Turkey
writer which essentially
locks your computer down
completely until you've hit
a writing goal of either word
count or minutes written.
It's very much like The
Most Dangerous Writing App
but instead of deleting your
work it just doesn't let you
do anything until you've
actually done that work.
Along side that is another
writing app called Blurt
which isn't so sadistic as
The Most Dangerous Writing App
or Cold Turkey writer, it
won't lock down your computer,
it won't delete your writing
but it does have that
feature which blurs every
line except for the one
you're currently working
on which can, again,
help to silence that inner critic
and help you actually keep writing.
That brings us to our final
category in this video
which I like to call feedback and reports.
None of the apps here force
you to do anything actively,
they don't make you put money on the line,
they don't block sites
but they do show you,
in naked embarrassing detail,
what you've been doing with your time.
And the first one that
I'm going to list here
is one called Toggl which
is an active time tracker
where you actually have to
start a clock and tell it
what you're going to be
doing during that time.
Now as with Pomodoro apps
I find that using manual
time tracking apps makes me
more likely to do the thing
I set out to do because I set
a timer and I've intentionally
started that process.
But this also lets you take
advantage of what's been
called the Hawthorne
effect which describes
how people tend to change
their behavior for the better
when they know that they're
being observed or tracked.
And in my experience
with manual time tracking
I found that this tends to
happen even if you're the one
doing the observations
of your own behavior.
Now if you happen to find
that Toggl is not the
time tracking app for you don't worry
because there are dozens
of other ones out there.
And I do want to give an
honorable mention to one
called Clockify which is completely free.
Now Toggl's personal
features are also free
so they're pretty comparable
for anybody wanting
to use them on a strictly personal basis
but any of you guys out
there managing teams
you might want to give Clockify a look.
Now both of those apps are built
around manual time tracking.
We are now going to move over
to automatic time tracking
with apps like RescueTime.
As you may have gathered
from the previous sentence
RescueTime, and other apps
like it, automatically
tracks the time you spend
on different websites
and applications, categorizes that time
as productive or non-productive
and then gives you
reports on how you've
been spending your time.
And these reports can be very eye opening
because you may think you
know how you spend your time
but how you think you
spend your time is probably
very different than how you
actually spend your time
and it could be pretty surprising
to see just how much time
you waste watching cat
videos and not actually
getting your work done.
Now along side RescueTime
and apps like Timing,
and Hours and other things
that are very similar
there's another app I
want to mention called
Y-Productive and I'm
adding this to the list
because it does what RescueTime
does but it also allows
you to create daily
project and task lists.
So it kind of combines
multiple productivity
features into one.
And finally, before I tell
you the apps on this list
that I use personally,
the last item that we have
to talk about is something
called Screen Time
which is a built-in feature in iOS 12.
So if you're using an
iPhone you might not need
an automatic time tracker
or a website blocker
because this thing can
do both of those things.
It'll tell you where
you're spending your time
on your phone, how many
hours and you can also set up
number one, apps that are gonna be blocked
and also something called downtime hours
which are specific hours
where you can't access
any apps whatsoever except for ones
that you put on a specific whitelist.
So that brings us to a question
that I'm sure that many
of you are likely to have
which is out of all the apps
on this list which are the ones that I use
on a daily basis myself.
But for those of you who are wondering
those apps include
Beeminder which I mentioned
in the beginning of this video as one
of my favorite apps and one of the things
that let me build this YouTube
channel in the first place.
Additionally I also use Strides
which is the habit tracker
that I'm currently using
and very much enjoying.
The Tide app which is my
Pomodoro tracker of choice,
Freedom to block distracting
website on my computer
and my phone and RescueTime
so I can get those reports
and see just how much time
I'm wasting on a daily basis
and hopefully to reduce
that in the future.
Of course there are many
other apps that I use
to get things done, many productivity apps
that don't quite fall into the category
of things that force
me to get my work done
but that do build systems
or allow me to do things
much more efficiently.
And one of the apps that
you guys been asking me
a lot about in the recent
past is one called Notion
which I use for many
different things including
managing these video projects.
Now Notion is incredibly
flexible and powerful.
It's done a lot to improve my workflows
and it could potentially be
a very useful tool for you,
possibly even a note-taking
system of choice.
But a lot of you guys have
told me that Notion is also
very complicated and you don't
quite know where to start.
So if you find yourself in
that camp or you want to learn
how to set up a very efficient
workflow, really, really
quickly, I'm gonna recommend
that you take my friend
Francesco's Notion course
over on Skillshare.
Francesco is an absolute
expert when it comes
to productivity apps and this
course is a great resource
for figuring out how to
get the most out of Notion.
Of course while you're on
Skillshare you might also want
to take my friend Mike
Vardy's course on time theming
if you want to become even productive.
And that's a skill
that'll help you no matter
what apps you're using on a daily basis.
And in case you don't
know Skillshare is also
an amazing resource
for learning new skills
across a ton of different disciplines
because they've got over 22,000 courses
and topics ranging from
business to marketing
to story telling to digital animation,
to even music production.
What's more Skillshare
is incredibly affordable
with a premium subscription costing less
than 10 bucks a month.
And even better if you click the link
in the description down
below you can get a two month
free trial with unlimited
learning on the platform.
You can learn a lot in two months.
So if you want to start
learning some new skills
or increasing your productivity
or digging into Notion
or any of the other app
tutorials on the platform
and you want to support this
channel then click the link
in the description down below and sign up.
Big thanks to Skillshare
for sponsoring this video
and being a huge supporter of this channel
and as always thank you
so much for watching.
Hopefully you found this video helpful.
Hopefully it pointed you to
something new that could help
you become more productive
on a daily basis.
And if it did or if you
just enjoy me talking
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Thanks for watching and I'll
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