15 Mac Apps to Help You Focus and Work Productively

The moment you boot up your Mac, a variety of things pry for your attention. Email, social networks, reminders, and all sorts of distractions eventually trap you in the middle of a tug-of-war, making it almost impossible to focus on a single activity. As a result, you lose track of what you’re supposed to do. You might just find yourself looking up, wondering where the sun went all of the sudden. Here’s the good news though: there are apps that can help you solve this productivity problem. In this round-up, I’ll share 15 Mac apps that help you focus, whether it’s dimming the screen, blocking social networking sites, closing inactive applications, or working in time bursts. You can use one or mix a couple of these apps to fit the way you work.

Focus

Concentrate

Concentrate Concentrate is a utility designed to help you focus by getting rid of distraction and temptation. To avoid distraction, it allows you to block apps that you don’t need for a specific activity while automatically launching the apps necessary for the task. To overcome the temptation to waste time, you can block websites like Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks while you work. Price: $29 Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later Developer: Rocket

Quiet

Quiet Quiet aims to achieve focus and concentration by blurring your desktop with only your active applications up front. It silences notifications, changes your status on Adium or Skype to “Busy” or “Do Not Disturb,” and hides inactive or unrelated windows and apps (including Finder). Price: $1.99 Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later Developer: Wireload, LLC

Isolator

Isolator Isolator is an open source menu bar application that helps you focus by dimming your desktop with only the active windows visible to you. You can easily customize the app’s preferences to fit your needs, such as the level of opaqueness, filter type, fade speed, and others. Lastly, it allows you to hide your dock to keep you from opening apps that could distract you from work. The testing version (4.9beta) works on OS X 10.7.3, but you can download the older, more stable versions as well. Price: Free Requires: Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6, 10.7 Developer: Willmore.eu

Focus Mask

Focus Mask Focus Mask is another Mac application designed to get rid of distractions while you work. But more than just putting the active windows on stage with the rest behind the curtain, Focus Mask allows you to selectively choose which window to bring to the front and to isolate a part of a window through easy shortcuts. You can do this either through pattern detection or by manually highlighting the chosen portion by dragging and clicking the selection. Price: $0.99 Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later Developer: TenTrip, LLC

Think

Think Think is another great open source Mac application for distraction-free work. You can choose which applications to use by using a transparent control panel that hovers while you work. If you find that the control panel gets in the way, the developer has added a tabbed section of the Think homepage with instructions on how advanced users can customize Think’s hidden preferences. Price: Free Requires: Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later Developer: Freeverse

Spirited Away

Spirited Away Spirited Away is a menu bar Mac application that checks the activity levels of the apps currently in use. The app then hides those apps that have been idle for a period of time, freeing your desktop of clutter and distraction. Price: Free Requires: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later Developer: Drikin

Houdini

Houdini Houdini is another menu bar utility app that hides inactive applications to help you stay focused. The app sports a simple interface and allows you to configure the settings for each hidden application. It’s inspired by Spirited Away and is free to download from the Mac App Store. Price: Free Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later Developer: Nial Giacomelli, UglyApps

Anti-Social

Anti-Social Anti-Social takes on a different approach as it only blocks off the “social parts” of the Internet. This means that you and your favorite social networking services are at the mercy of Anti-Social. Simply set the amount of time you wish to block these social sites and focus. The only way you’ll be able to get out of Anti-Social is to reboot your computer, which I think is a great motivator to keep you focused. Price: $15 Requires: Mac OS X 10.4 or later Developer: Fred Stutzman

Time Bursts & Breaks In Between

Pomodoro

Pomodoro Distraction leads to procrastination, which is what Pomodoro aims to eradicate once and for all. Using the famous Pomodoro Technique by Francesco Cirillo, this app offers several features besides setting you to work in 25-minute time bursts. Some of these include Things/Omnifocus integration, exporting Pomodoro activity statistics, keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to create Applescripts to customize how the app works through an in-app editor. Price: $4.99 on the Mac App Store Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later Developer: iUgol

My Little Pomodoro

My Little Pomodoro Here’s another Pomodoro Mac app if you prefer a cheaper alternative and a simpler implementation of the Pomodoro Technique. While in the menu bar, it records your timed activities, allows you to customize the time lengths, integrates with iChat/Adium/Skype, and logs your Pomodoro activities/breaks by day, week, or month. Price: $3.99 Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later Developer: Voltage Software LLC

Focus Booster

Focus Booster Built in Adobe Air, Focus Booster is another beautiful Pomodoro app for those who work according to the Pomodoro technique. Available on the web and for PC or Mac users, Focus Booster aims to help you get things done through unobtrusive design and simple but effective functionality. Price: Free Requires: Mac OS X 10.4, v10.5 or v10.6, Adobe Air, Intel Core™ Duo or faster processor, 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended) Developer: Focus Booster

BreakTime

BreakTime BreakTime encourages you to take breaks in between bursts of productivity. Spending too much time sitting and staring at your computer screen can cause health problems for you, so BreakTime makes sure that you stand up and move away from your desk by disabling your dock and dimming the screen. For those who need to be stricter with themselves can activate “enforce” mode, which disables the ability to skip breaks. Price: $4.99 Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later Developer: excited pixel

Time Out

Time Out Time Out is another application that encourages you to take breaks in between work hours. By default, regular breaks are 50 minutes of work, 10 minutes for breaks with 15-second “micro breaks” in between. Once it’s time for a break, it slowly fades over your desktop and disables your dock to prevent you from doing anything but rest. The minute you launch the app, it begins to time your breaks. Price: Free Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later Developer: Dejal

Vitamin R

Vitamin R Vitamin R is a more powerful and feature-rich application for those who want to fully recapture their focus and fully motivate themselves to concentrate. It slices your tasks through short time bursts of between 10 to 30 minutes, while giving you full control over the way you work. This way, you free yourself of unproductive/incompatible productivity methods, procrastination, and the stress of getting things done. Price: $19.99 Requires: Mac OS X 10.6 or later Developer: Publicspace.net

Time Sink

Time Sink I end this round-up with a simple but useful application called Time Sink. It keeps track of how you spend your time on your Mac by automatically logging opened windows and applications and recording the amount of time spent on these. At the end of the day, you can take a look at how you spend your time through detailed graphs. You can read our full review of Time Sink to learn more. Price: $4.99 Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later Developer: Many Tricks

Conclusion Depending on how you work, you can use a combination of these apps to achieve the ideal work balance. For instance, you can use Isolator to dim your desktop and focus, while using FocusBooster to work in time bursts. You can also use Time Out or BreakTime to push yourself to take breaks in between work to avoid feeling burnt out. Give yourself a few days to test these apps out and see which combo works best for you. We hope your productivity levels and focus improve with the help of this round-up. What other apps do you use to stay focused? Do you work in time bursts or by simply blocking applications and distracting websites?