Social media apps tend to diagnose everyone and their aunt with ADHD, but a new type of popular app, called focus gaming, is actually trying to do something about our splintered attention spans. These cozy-looking, gentle programs are a digital rebellion that appear to be genuinely effective. But why are so many people finding success with them?
It’s not easy to put away digital distractions when they’re housed in the same device as your academic or work assignments. When I was in graduate school, I used an aggressive Mac application called Self Control to keep myself off social media. The logo is a skull inside a spade, a symbol for the inevitability of death, often associated with the military, motorcycle culture, and psychological warfare. Users create a block list of verboten websites and set a timer for as little as 60 seconds and as long as 24 hours. The skull then stares at you, menacingly, as you get to work and fight the instinct to check Instagram.
At that time it felt like the best approach was to bully myself into being productive. I would write self-deprecating messages with Sharpies on sticky notes, using copious exclamation points, underlines, and all-caps, like: “FINISH OUTLINE TODAY” and “ANSWER EMAILS, LAZY!!!!” Maybe it’s a millennial thing. We are the “sociology midterm paper final revised PRINT THIS ONE DUMMY.docx” generation, after all.
“One of the most common things that gets in the way of gentle self-compassion is the thought that it will undermine motivation,” Clary Tepper, who has a PhD in clinical psychology and specializes in ADHD assessments for older teens and adults, says over email. My old strategy was, therefore, not uncommon; however, using bursts of negative energy as fuel really only produces short-term results.
“People who have higher levels of self-compassion experience less mind wandering and have better control over their attention,” Dr. Tepper continues. “Being gentle with yourself leads to better performance over time and enhanced executive functions.”
Focus Friend, an app co-created by the longtime YouTuber and self-proclaimed “internet guy” Hank Green and game developer Bria Sullivan, serves the same basic function as Self Control: to prevent you from trying to access social media. But it has a much more compassionate approach. Instead of a death omen, there’s a cute anthropomorphic bean that politely asks you to put down your phone so it can concentrate on knitting. The timer only goes to 120 minutes, encouraging you both to take breaks. The aesthetic is reminiscent of mobile games like Neko Atsume, the cozy cat-collecting game that was popular in the mid 2010s.
When I described the app to some coworkers, one asked if the bean’s request was passive aggressive. We really just expect to be bullied, huh? But it is a real fear with games like this. Have you been haunted by the Duolingo owl? Do you remember logging on to the Nintendo Wii Fit only to be met with a disparaging remark about how long it’s been since your last workout? Thankfully, the bean won’t hit me with any nags, negs, or backhanded compliments.
With Focus Friend, you can trade your bean’s knitted socks and scarves in a store for decorations and clothing upgrades. Unlike some popular apps, though, there’s no way to use your own money to bypass gaming elements and purchase more points. You actually have to focus. One thing I find Focus Friend is especially effective for? Prioritizing sleep. Set that timer for two hours the second you get into bed and stop scrolling.
Work-related apps like Focus Friend and On-Together: Virtual Coworking that boast body doubling features have become popular. Body doubling is a productivity technique or tool where simply feeling the presence of another person or avatar can help you focus. Basically, you’re creating a sense of accountability for yourself.
The feeling of company and accountability is why, even when we think we need fewer distractions, working in a busy library or coffee shop is often more effective than holing up alone in your room or home office. And this doesn’t just apply to working on a computer. In my experience, listening to a podcast instead of music (or even television, depending on the show) while doing household tasks such as laundry, cleaning, or cooking has a similar effect. Having someone talking near you, but not to you, can be helpful.
Some body doubling programs, like FocusMate and Flow, pair you with a stranger who will sit in silence on a video conference while you both work on your daily tasks. But if turning on your camera and inviting a stranger into your home isn’t for you, try animated digital options. Players on Love and Deepspace, a mobile story-based romance game, have figured out how to use the game’s Quality Time feature with characters as a form of digital body doubling.
Having an animated hottie sit across from you while you work is motivating, in theory; but at least one user on Reddit did find that having her character’s attractive love interest make eyes at her while she worked was too distracting.
“In the field of psychology,” Dr. Tepper says, “the technique is called social facilitation and it has been studied for over a century.” Tepper became aware of the practice of body doubling from some of her Gen Z clients, and now recommends it while doing ADHD testing. “Research shows us that when two people are working alongside each other, the simple presence of another person enhances activity in the brain that improves focus.”
Ilgin S, one of the Steam game On-Together’s indie developers, was unaware of body doubling until she started doing research with her team. But she immediately understood the feeling, likening it to being a kid and having your mom sit with you while you do your homework or, as an adult, having a partner or friend nearby. “I always keep my boyfriend sleeping in the living room when I’m working,” she says. “It kind of gives the sense of relaxing. Even if I'm not, myself, relaxing, at least he is.”
“Maybe this is undiagnosed ADHD,” she adds. [“Who among us,” I joke.] “But I don’t know. I’m not authorized to say that.”
On-Together is an open-world island. Once your avatar spawns onto a server, users can have it pull up a desk and start working/focusing anywhere. But there are dedicated areas throughout that offer a variety of comfortable seating arrangements, including: a traditional library, an outdoor classroom, a campfire, the beach, a floating dock, a boardwalk cafe, tree swings, a picnic table, a lily pond, and a secret firepit. The games within the game, like basketball, band practice, and fishing are all lo-fi and low-key.
“I hate wearing shoes,” says Ilgin S. “I'm always on the beach, on the shore, when I'm online in the game. There's this meme of a girl using a computer in the water, waves crushing her. That's kind of like what I imagine when I have things to do.”
On-Together gives users the option to body-double with other people on an open server. In my experience, users on these servers tend to congregate in the library or on the boardwalk, just as they might in real life. You can also create a private server, explore the island solo, and/or use your own avatar (shrunk down to a widget on the corner of your screen) as a body double.
“We don't consider [On-Together] as a productivity game,” Ilgin S says. “We don't consider ourselves very productive people, but we were working from home since the COVID [pandemic], maybe a little earlier than COVID. We were doing this unintentional body doubling with our friends or with each other. Like, I was playing Sims, but I left it open on another monitor. The Sims were hanging out with me.”
As with Focus Friend, On-Together’s users are lightly incentivized through tickets that you earn primarily by leaving your avatar alone to focus. The timer designed for focus sessions and designated breaks follows the Pomodoro Technique. Designed by writer and software developer Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s, the Pomodoro Technique suggests that time management can best be achieved by breaking work into 25-minute intervals with alternatively short and long intermittent breaks. The word “pomodoro” is Italian for “tomato,” and Pomodoro timers like the one in On-Together are tomato-shaped.
On-Together also operates as a digital third space because it features a capacity for games and a minimalist chat room. As teenagers in the ’00s, Ilgin S and her team were “MSN kind of people,” referring to the instant-messaging service, which inspired them when developing On-Together.
“We are coming from that culture,” she says. “We realized, ‘Okay, there are focus or Pomodoro games out there, but there are not a lot of chat room games.’” It made sense during the pandemic, especially, because everyone was so isolated. “We live in a very small town in Turkiye and we don’t see a lot of friends. It’s kind of neat of someone to be there for you when you are working from home, or when you are a college student.”
Ilgin S continues, “‘Productivity,’ as a word, already gives so much stress.” Other, more corporate productivity apps, like the ones cited above, are or were all about metrics. “Our game is kind of relaxed. We have productivity tools, but we don't force anything. We just give cute cosmetics. You get tickets from, like, spending time in the game. But we don't have that structured productivity thing. We try to create a place for non-stressful people [or people] who already have stress because working is stressful. We don't glorify working [...] and we don't care about what you're wearing on your workday. You can wear bunny ears or a tail in our game.”
But can the internet save you from the internet? Are we in danger of procrastinating with a game that’s supposed to help fight procrastination? It’s certainly a potential pitfall, according to Dr. Tepper, as the incentives in the game that might enable you to get your tasks done could start to become more important than the tasks themselves. “Commercial apps are designed to keep people using the app, which is a different goal than actual real-world goal attainment,” she warns. “Overall, I think the apps can be helpful if they are used as a tool for clients who like the types of rewards they offer. They work best when they are one part of an overall treatment strategy.
So far, the On-Together developers haven’t gotten too much feedback about the game itself becoming an addiction. “Sometimes I see comments like, ‘I came to lock in, but not today,’” says Ilgin S. “It’s okay.” They’re trying to facilitate a stress-free environment, after all.
For the most part, people know why they’re there. It’s on the tin, so to speak. “It's a virtual coworking game,” she adds, “so people are aware of their time, and they value their time.” Based on my time spent hopping around various servers, I haven’t seen anyone so game-focused that they’re not also working.
Regardless, students and freelancers are probably the best audience for this game. Don’t expect to see your boss roll out On-Together for the whole office, even if you do work remotely. “I think it would be hard to convince the corporate world to adopt focus games, apps, or workspaces,” says Dr. Tepper. “My experience in working with CEOs is that they want employees to do their job without needing to rely on things that they see as distracting. I think it would be hard to convince them that this might actually increase performance for some employees.”
It’s not surprising that the cozy aesthetic of these apps feels like a bit of rebellion against workspace apps like Gather and those owned by Meta—which sold themselves on opportunities for productivity-boosting coworking spaces and imploded. “It wasn’t lovely or cute,” Ilgin S observes. Or compassionate, I might add. It’s not a digital detox. Apps that encourage you to take breaks, drink water, enjoy nature, and feel the presence of someone else are obviously not the full Luddite experience—they’re still apps. But they might be a step in a more productive, for lack of a better word, direction.
