musicMagpie Blog

Every Thursday, we bring you an app that'll make your life easier. This week, it's the turn of Forest, a productivity and tree-growing app. Yes, you read that correctly…

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What is it?

Forest aims to keep you away from your smartphone so you can get on with other stuff.

Although using an app to keep you off your phone sounds as effective as sitting in a car to stop yourself driving, Forest is built around a neat and surprisingly effective gimmick.

When you open up the app, you're given a seed. When you want concentrate, you plant your seed and a tree starts growing. However, if you leave the app to go on Facebook or browse Buzzfeed, your tree will start to wither away – and you don't want that, do you?

If you manage to avoid temptation for half an hour, your seed will grow into a beautiful tree. Over time, you can grow a whole forest.

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Why is it surprisingly easy?

You'll get weirdly invested in the health of your trees, which gives you a great incentive to improve your productivity and concentration. The half an hour it takes to grow a tree isn't too long either, which means it's fairly easy to put your phone down and focus before hitting up Need For Speed: No Limits for 10 minutes.

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The best bit

Growing a big old forest and knowing that each tree is time you spent wisely…provided you didn't put your phone down and spend half an hour on FIFA.

You can also track your history, which illustrates how your focus has developed over time. Don't worry if you need to use your phone for work either; you can whitelist certain apps that won't harm your productivity score.

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Download Forest on iTunes | Download Forest on Google Play Store

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Remember to check out our own surprisingly easy app too. It's free to download and allows you to scan all your barcodes for an instant price. It's the fastest and easiest way to get cash for your stuff!

Download musicMagpie on iTunes | Download musicMagpie on Google Play Store