Quarantine App Highlight #1: Flora

Flora - Stay Focused

The point of the Flora app is to help you focus. It came up for me in the App Store when I searched for pomodoro timers, and looked like one of the cutest ones. If you complete your focus goals, you collect cute trees and plants in the app. You can also invite others to join you and try to focus together - the fate of your tree or plant depends on all of you completing your focus goal. 

There are also ways to make monetary wagers against yourself and if you lose, that money goes to conservation efforts. You can also sign up for low cost paths that reward the environment with a tree if you complete more long - term goals. 

I actually am using this app right now so I don’t get distracted check my phone while I am writing this blog post. I even had to take a break to change my alarm for tomorrow morning, and could very easily mark my break. As far as I can tell too, it’s more of a reminder to not look at other parts of your phone because you can still access other parts of your phone even without being on a “break.” So basically, be good and don’t misuse that information, but if you are worried you will miss an important call or have trouble accessing other parts of your phone if you really need to, that should not be an issue. 

Something that I could see people not liking about this app is that as of right now, you can only sign in with Facebook, and it wants access to:

• Public Profile
• Friends List (to help match you with friends on the app)
• Birthday
• Email Address

I did not mind that it asked for these details, but I am sure some people would. It also is sad that people who do not have Facebook would not be able to use this app. They apparently are trying to work on other sign in methods, so we will just have to wait and see.

Overall, this app seems to be very helpful and cute. If you want to get better at time management and focusing, this is the app for you.