5 Apps and Strategies to Help Students with Concentration and Focus
Some parents complain about getting their kids to focus on their schoolwork. These are some of the everyday worries that a parent has. Two main ingredients for successful students are concentration and focus. These two factors are critical contributors to excellent academic performance. Thankfully several strategies can help students improve their concentration and focus. We will explore the top 5 strategies and apps to help with students’ concentration and focus.
Importance of Concentration and Focus and Productivity in school
When you compare well-performing students to average performers, a common theme for success is their concentration and focus.
Concentration and focus have a direct impact on the productivity and the results of a student. If your kid is not motivated and too distracted to finish their tasks, it will create additional frustration when it takes time from what they enjoy doing. If your student performs poorly in his/her school, consider paying attention to their focus and motivation.
Several factors can impact the concentration of a student. Moreover, we live in a society full of distractions. Therefore, students can quickly lose their concentration if we do not actively monitor it.
Issues of Focus and Motivation in Today’s Digital Society
There are pros and cons as we enter a more digital lifestyle. One of the most significant issues of the digital era is the issue of digital distraction. This issue affects both adults and kids. In current society, almost every other person has a smartphone. Even children are now exposed to digital devices at a young age. How many times have you seen kids use their parents’ phones at the dinner table? These digital distractions for kids can come in the form of games, videos, and social media.
Moreover, apart from social media distraction, the blue light emitted from tablets, computers, and phones can cause insomnia. Lack of sleep further impacts a student’s ability to focus and concentrate.
Factors Contributing to Concentration and Focus
When it comes to concentration and focus, numerous factors play a critical role. Therefore, as a student or a parent, its essential to understand and actively monitor how each of these factors affects you. Some factors which can negatively impact the concentration and focus of a student are:
- Poor diet and nutrition
- Lack of sleep
- Stress
- Lack of physical activity
- Dehydration
- External distractions (ie. excessive phone usage)
- Boredom and lack of challenge
5 Apps and Strategies to Help Students With Concentration and Focus
There are a bunch of ideas strategies to help with focus, concentration, and overall productivity. We’ve focused on the top strategies that would best help students and their studies. You can read the full list of 100 productivity tips here. Along with these strategies are suggested apps that utilize the methods to help promote focus. Here are the top 5 strategies to help with student’s concentration and focus.
- Timeboxing
- Task Tracking
- Blocking Distractions
- Wellness and Exercise
- Meditation Mindfulness and Sleep
1) Time Boxing
Timeboxing is an excellent and well-researched strategy that is shown to improve focus and concentration. Applied to students, it will help to manage their time more efficiently and make tasks seem less daunting. In the timeboxing method, instead of focusing on completing a task, you will focus on the importance of the task. In practice, you will allocate a specific time “boxes” to complete a particular task or activity.
The rule is you only spend the “time-boxed” allotted time to do the one task and nothing else. After each time block, there is a sense of accomplishment that something has been completed. Breaking a larger task with focus sessions and dedicated breaks helps break a daunting task into manageable pieces.
The two of the best apps that is focused on time boxing technique:
Forest App
This app can help students to improve their focus on a single task. Using the Forest app, you can set the time you need to complete a particular task. There are game mechanisms built in that make it friendly and playful for children.
As the name indicates, each time you complete a focus session you can plant a “tree” in your forest. You can change the settings to detect a “break” in focus such as opening apps on the phone. If the focus session is not completed the tree you were growing withers.
Check out the Forest App here.
Tomato Timer App
Tomato timer is another amazing time boxing app that helps with concentration and focus. The Pomodoro technique is a popular time-management method that aims to use time-boxing with set breaks in between. The method revolves around 20 minutes of focus time with 5 min breaks in between. Moreover, the Tomato Timer app is a color-coded countdown timer to remind you to keep focus.
Check out the Tomato Timer App here.
2) Task Tracking
Firstly, we have discussed the importance of focus and time to complete a task. Now, it’s time to prioritize your task from the most important one to least important. Task tracking helps to rank which tasks are most important, and you can use time-boxing to complete the tasks.
Using task tracking apps can help parents and children collaboratively keep track of their homework and chores. These lists provide a sense of reward and achievement when things are checked off the list.
There are numerous free and paid tools and apps in the market that can manage your to-do list. Two of the best task tracking apps to improve concentration for children/students are:
Microsoft To-Do
The Microsoft To-Do list app is formerly known as the Wunderlist app. It was brought by Microsoft. It’s a cross-platform app to is to make a list of all important tasks. It comes with a clean and friendly interface to add tasks quickly and comes with a lot of flexibility. Its standout feature is its cross-platform functionality. It works with Windows, Android, and iOS. As a parent, you can track and share tasks with your children.
Check out the Microsoft To-Do App here.
Remember The Milk
Another great app for increasing concentration by task tracking is Remember the Milk. It is an excellent to-do app for busy people. Therefore, they will never forget important tasks, and even if they do, the app will remind them. You will get a notification via email, IM, mobile notification, and Twitter.
Check out the RememberTheMilk App Here.
3) Blocking Distractions
One of the reasons for low focus and concentration among students is distractions. This also applies to adults in the workplace. Therefore, to improve concentration, students and parents need to block those distractions. Since we are talking about digital channels here well take a look at apps that block digital distractions.
One of the best blocking distraction apps include:
Cold Turkey
Cold Turkey is an excellent app for both macOS and Windows to help students focus and concentrate on studies by blocking distractions. Using Cold Turkey, you can block all common distraction sites like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, etc. one of the popular features of the app is Frozen Turkey that can lock you out of your computer for the set time. As a result, this is a handy app for those having bad computer habits.
Check out the ColdTurkey App here.
4) Wellness and Exercise
Generally, people don’t give much importance to health and fitness. But as a parent, you should understand that your child’s overall fitness plays an essential role in their concentration and focus. Don’t get nervous if you have no idea how to maintain the health of your children. This section will explain one of the best apps for the wellness and exercise of children to keep them focused and concentrated.
An excellent app for wellness and exercise of children is:
Sworkit Kids App
Sworkit has several great workouts with separate workouts for kids as well as for adults. This app comes with numerous amazing features like it is entirely free and comes with a customizable option. It offers a wide range of workouts from cardio, stretching, yoga, and strength. Moreover, there is also a self-timer to select the amount of time for your workout. Lastly, the best thing is it comes with a wide range of easy do at-home workouts.
Check out the Sworkit Kids App here.
5) Meditation, Mindfulness and Sleep
Meditation and mindfulness and sleep has been extensively researched in recent years. For school children, meditation and mindfulness have evidence that it boosts attention and better at coping with stress. The MIT study showed that this resulted in better performance and grades in school.
Best meditation and mindfulness and sleep apps include:
Dreamy Kid
The dreamy kid is one of the best kids meditation apps out there. It has over 250k downloads. There are guided visualizations and curated affirmations for kids to improve their concentration and focus. It uses special and proven methods to guide kids to achieve mindfulness through meditation. This app comes with a gentle background sounds, healing activities, affirmations, and timers. Additionally, there are programs for deep sleep, bedtime stories, healing activities, and a guided journal.
Check out the Dreamy Kid App here.
Calm For Kids
The Calm app was first created for adults, but they now have added functionality for children and schools. The start of the calm app is very soothing as you will hear the gentle sound of indoors on the opening app. There are wide ranges of guided meditations to assist people. Calm includes soothing background voices, breathing exercises, and bedtime stories. This is one of the best exercises for beginners to relax, reduce stress, and get better sleep. Moreover, the latest feature of this app comes with a mood check-in feature.
Check out the Calm For Kids App here.
Takeaways on Strategies to Help with Concentration and Focus
For students to improve their concentration and focus, they have to win against their distractions and other factors like a poor diet or lack of sleep. We only touched upon five strategies and apps to help students with those strategies. There are many strategies out there to increase focus and concentration in students. Additionally, we recommend you try different methods to see which is most receptive to your child.
If you really want your kids to be more focused, you’ll need to educate them on how focus and concentration are important. It’s important to be self-aware and realize how easy it is to become distracted. For further reading, you can check our other articles on digital media and children.