While working from home has many benefits, it also has some obstacles. You may gain a head start on work by leaving your bed to go to your home office, but you lose some time caring for your family.
Identifying frequent work-from-home distractions is crucial to maximizing the benefits of working from home. By using the Serene app, you can avoid distractions and stay productive. Here’s how it works:
What Is Serene?
Serene helps you establish one goal each day, encouraging you to find inner serenity. You will divide your day into segments while using the app. It will keep track of how effective you are and which applications put you in a circle every time you use them.
Serene can block all apps and websites while you are in a work session. This ensures a distraction-free experience. Folks at Serene have also developed a playlist that you can listen to while working.
The Serene app keeps you focused so you can finish your to-do list without interruption. This is a premium app with a free trial. You will need to provide your email address to get an invite when you download the app on your macOS.
You can download the extensions on your web browser even if you don’t use macOS. The extensions come with a website blocker.
Download: Serene for macOS | Chrome | Microsoft Edge | Firefox
The Serene app is $4/month with a 14-day free trial. However, the browser extensions are free. Let us look at Serene’s major features:
1. Website Blocker
While you sit down at your desk intending to get to work, you end up wasting time on the internet. Social media is well thought out to peak your interest. When you download Serene’s web browser extension, it enables the website blocking function. To use it, just open a new tab.
Press Go Serene to start a session that lasts 30 minutes. You can also pause a session or exit it any time you want. If you open a new tab between the sessions, a Serene screen informing you of a session countdown meter will appear.
When you open a new tab while using the app, you’ll see your goal and current session information. You can reflect on your productivity after finishing all your sessions, and if you reached your aim. Serene’s reporting insights available with the app help you in measuring productivity.
2. App Blocker
It lets you regain your attention and handle distractions, so you can concentrate on what’s important. Serene requests you to pick the apps you want to disable when you download the app. With one click you can start the Serene session and block desktop apps.
3. To-Do List
Like typical to-do lists, Serene doesn’t make it clear what you should be doing. And so, it doesn’t tell you to focus on one objective every day. Yet, you can establish a goal for the day and break it into sessions.
You can create a specific time period for each activity on your to-do list. Serene will brief you on your assignment and the time that you have to do it upon starting the session.
4. Day Planner
Serene lets you make one daily objective and divide it down into chunks of concentrated work. You can intersperse this with scheduled breaks. Every morning, decide your goal, then break it down into a series of sessions.
Define your objectives so you can complete the task. Every time you begin a session, you will get a reminder about the steps needed to get started. This will help you stay focused and not get stuck.
You may bundle these activities together into a single concentration session, or you can check in during your breaks to do small tasks.
5. Phone Silencer
You can keep your priorities clear with Serene’s phone silencer and other methods. Also, it prevents interruptions and other people from creeping into your workday. It stops outside distractions, encouraging you to focus on one objective each day.
6. Focus Music
Based on research findings, the folks at Serence have created a Spotify playlist. This playlist revives focus and helps in being productive.
Towards Being Remotely Productive
The Website blocker is available with the extensions. The App blocker, To-Do list, and Phone Silencer are available with the app only. This app is geared at people that have remote jobs. With a rise in the number of non-office workers, distractions can have a greater impact on productivity and output.
It’s not just app blocking that can help you with being productive. Different tools that make work faster and collaborative are also a necessity. Try to learn about them too!