4 Apps to Help with Concentration

Orange County Academic Tutor Tips: 4 Apps to Help with Concentration

With the advent of Internet technology and research, the student’s job has become easier in that valuable material is at their fingertips. Studying can get done faster and research can be done more efficiently. However, with this new technology comes countless distractions. Students can easily tab over to social networking sites, email, or anything that seems “important” at the time. Unfortunately, this can increase a student’s homework time or study session by minutes or even hours. Luckily, there are several apps available to help students develop time management and self control while still staying on task and making the grade – the use of an Orange County private academic tutor is a great way for student’s to learn concentration tips from a professional.

1. Anti-Social ($15)

This app blocks a number of social networking sites from Facebook to Twitter to Reddit. Users can set the clock between 15 minutes and 8 hours. They can also add any additional sites they tend to visit when they should be doing homework. There are so many distractions available online these days that sometimes students simply need to have the temptation taken away from them. Students in high school or college can set up this app for themselves, knowing that it will help them improve their grades and test scores, or parents can set it up for younger children. This is an expensive app at $15, but could be well worth it when it comes to a straight A grade card.

2. Focus Booster (free!)

Focus booster will help students who actually work too hard. Yes, there are tons of students out there who will sit at their desk until 3 a.m. attempting to write an awesome paper. Unfortunately, these students generally find out that anything that occurred after midnight resulted in an unintelligible ramble of unrelated words. There is a better way students can finish long-term study tasks, by taking short breaks. It’s important for students of any age to get up and walk around, take a breath, and get some fresh air after certain intervals. It’s also unhealthy to stare at the blue light within a computer for too long. Focus Booster schedules a break after 25 minutes. This will force students to stretch or relax for a few minutes in between assignments. Hopefully, they will return to their tasks more focused and alert.

3. SelfControl (free!)

This app can also help students block out distracting websites that they will be tempted to visit when they should be doing homework. This is a great way for students to use their own self control just long enough to install the app, and then know that it will stop them from veering away from the task at hand while they’re studying for midterms or finals.  This is a great app to use alone or when working with a study group. Let’s face it; it doesn’t matter if one computer has SelfControl, if Facebook and Twitter are still popping up on a friend’s laptop.

4. SoundCurtain ($4.99)

This app can help students who are already able to use self control with visual distractions or social networking but who simply can’t find a quiet place to work. In reality, there are plenty of noises within the home and libraries are not nearly as quiet as they used to be. Students who simply need a little bit of peace and quiet to get their work done can try out SoundCurtain, which will block out background noises when students use headphones. This app works by using white noise and other sounds that will make the outside world disappear during those important study sessions.

READ: “Tips from a Private Irvine English Tutor: 4 Apps to Improve Spelling”

READ: “5 Awesome SAT Apps”

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