 So you're just about to start studying and then boom! Instagram notification goes off, you have to see what it is. And then suddenly you find yourself watching OneReal, which quickly becomes 40. And sure enough, your favorite YouTuber releases a new video, you have to watch it. You can't stop at one video, their content's too good, you have to watch all of their shorts. And before you know it, you've just wasted two hours that are meant for studying for tomorrow's test. Now trust me, I've been there both in college and medical school and even as a full-time physician. And so today's episode, I want to go over some of my favorite apps that I've used, and two in particular that helped me keep both focused as well as motivated. Let's get into it. Now this is an app that I talked about before and really there's two features that I love about it. So let me just kind of jump in and show you guys on the screen. So if we go into the StayFocused app, this basically allows you to control all of the apps on your phone, which majority of us have distractions with. So for example, I have two profiles, one for email, one for social media, one because I know if social media is accessible at certain parts of the day, I am going to be very inefficient. So if I just go ahead and click activate, you can see now that if I try to go at any of these apps, being YouTube, Instagram, Messenger, Twitter, or my YouTube studio's analytics, from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., it will not let me access them at all, which is awesome. You can pick the apps for you or if you're somebody who loves to go on TikTok or Reddit, you can add those specific apps to your phone, and then it will basically not let you access them. So for example, if I wanted to go in and just go ahead and go into my Instagram, boom, it just goes, has and blocks me out of it. Now the second reason that I love the StayFocused app is I can also pick the time amount or the amount that I do per hour for an app. So for example, I'm somebody who naturally is very addicted to checking their emails, even though there's not something that's really important going on. So I've set my personal limit to three launches per hour. That means that if I go into my Gmail and click it three times, after the third time it's going to say, sorry, you've already tried to access your emails eight times this hour, you're not allowed to. And really just using these two simple profiles for me being the social media and email settings have made my productivity increase drastically, but you can make as many settings or profiles as you want. So for example, if I wanted to create a new profile, we'll just go ahead and call this one YouTube. I can go ahead and check any of my apps. So the 2048 app, which was very addictive game and go next and I can change it to usage time specific time intervals like we've seen a quick block number of launches, which we've also seen a wait timer as well as gold base. So I can go through each of these and set them for one app or a majority of apps throughout the day. So let's go back and add my Gmail the way we had set it up before. And I'm going to only want to set the number of launches. I'm going to say an hourly limit. And we're going to make this every single day of the week. So I don't want to be addicted. And we're just going to do three launches for the app. There you go. That one's back up to setting. And now I won't be able to access my emails. In addition, you can use the Stay Focused app to block websites and keywords as well. So for example, if I block Instagram, I go into Instagram using my browser and that just defeats the purpose. So I can also go ahead and block a certain site that I may want to use. Or if I want to set my daily screen time goals, so probably only spent an hour of today and 16 unlocks. But if you wanted to add a limit saying I only want to spend three hours on my phone all day, you could do so. Now the Stay Focused app is free currently for Android users. I believe it's the very small fee for iOS users at one time. And it does have a premium version, which I don't use. But if you're somebody who likes to have a lot of granularity control, which apps and how many launches and et cetera, you can do so. And I really do think it's worth the money because again, when I'm not able to get those social media and Gmail things to access, I am very much more focused on the work that I have to do. Now before we get back into today's episode, let's take a quick second to talk about today's sponsor, which is Picmonic. Now if you're unfamiliar with Picmonic and you're on your medical journey, they have hundreds and hundreds of videos for literally any class or material that you may need. And what makes Picmonic so unique is that in addition to having so many videos on literally any topic you need. So for example, here we're in microbiology, you can click on any video. So here's Staph Aureus and the videos themselves are very short. So this video is about a one minute 54 seconds, but essentially we'll break down the most high yield components that you have to know in the setting about Staph Aureus in this very nice story format using images. So here's a very nice Oreo cookie that essentially will link an image to your brain on an important concept about that. In the future videos, you may find that the same memorable image is included in another related video. So then you can link together concepts. For example, here, this venom jar with green represents food poisoning. So any bacteria that may cause food poisoning may have this image in their overall picture and video. So you could say, okay, I know all different bacterias that have food poisoning. And then whenever you feel comfortable with a relatively short story, you can easily go into the review and quiz phase and actually quiz yourself on the various different high yield components. Now in addition to having a very unique and easy way to remember information for your quizzes and tests, you can also add all of the videos you're watching into a relative playlist. So if you're studying for a microbiology class, you can go ahead and essentially click all the videos that you add and add it to those playlists. And then whenever it's time, you can come back to your individual playlist and either watch those individual videos again or ask for specific quiz questions related to the videos that you've now said that you've mastered or at least learned the first time. And that's just scratching the surface in terms of features that pick monocas to help you on your medical journey. Other cool things include having a weakness guide so you can see which topics here are the weakest in as well as their study scheduler. So you can actually say these are the topics I need to know and here's my test day and then it will essentially will give you a study schedule based off of that. So if you're looking for an all-in-one resource you're on your medical journey and you haven't quite found it, definitely recommend checking out Picmonic. If you're interested, there'll be a link down below. And our friends at Picmonic have also been nice enough to include an extra 20% discount if you use the code the MDJourney ad checkout. And so if you're interested in learning more about Picmonic, that link will be down below. And as always, thanks to Picmonic for being today's sponsor. Now the second lab that I love using and I've also talked about on the channel is the Forest app. Now this is a very unique app where StoveFocus's goal is to block access to distracting apps, websites, keywords. The Forest app is designed to help you stay motivated and when you're actually on a roll. A lot of you guys are familiar with the Pomodoro technique where you're spending 25 minutes on studying or whatever work and then five to 10 minutes of a break. But there's not a visual way of seeing how on top of it you have been in terms of flow of momentum. The Forest app helps with exactly this. And here's how basically the Forest app works. So for example, let's say that I want to go ahead and start doing some productive work. I'm just going to use my phone as a timer and I can actually go ahead and just hit plant. Now the part and the goal of the StoveFocus app is that it wants to show you a visual representation is also serving at a timer. So it's set at 25 minutes. And so if I wanted to do something for example, like read a new article on something important like colon cancer screening, I can go ahead and read this article from the New England Journal without getting distracted. And as my app is going my tree or my two leaves right now is going to become more and more fruitful. As I become more productive throughout the days and weeks and keeping my account, I'll be able to actually literally grow an entire forest. Now in addition to using the app, which I absolutely love, I can also go ahead and have a free Quorum extension where you can have the timer built in. And as I'm reading this article, this timer will grow and this plant will continue to grow as well. If you again link it with your account, you'll start to see your forest visually grow. The momentum is there. You can use the StoveFocus app to block the things that you want as well as using the forest app to block certain websites or URLs and use it as a momentum tool to stay productive. Now the pricing for the forest app is free for Android users. For those who use the Quorum extension, there is a small fee for iOS, but you guys picked this life, but I will go ahead and link down below all of the apps that we talked about, both for iOS and androids in case you want to go check them out. Now I could share more apps with you guys in today's episode that completely defeats the purpose because you're watching this episode on how to stay focused, how to stay motivated, how to stay consistent, and really you just need one app that can block the most common sources of distractions and another that kind of keeps you going with the momentum. Well, if those two apps stay focused in the forest, really it's something that's helped me 10x my productivity. Hopefully it can help you guys do the same. Again, I will link those down below in the description. But if you guys did enjoy today's episode, all it asks is hit that quick like button if you're watching on YouTube. If you're watching this on a podcast, go ahead and hit that like, subscribe on your favorite listening platform as well as leaving an honest review on that platform. And if you guys are interested in any of our free resources, some of our paid programs, those will be linked down below. So my favorites include the free MedSchool Success Handbook, which has 30 plus tips of things that I wish that I knew when I started medical school. I'm giving you guys free, absolutely free, that will be linked down below. If you guys are interested in working with myself as well as our study coaches on improving your grades in a short amount of time, just want to see what success that our old students have gotten, go ahead and check that link down below as well. But as always, my friends, if you enjoyed today's episode, you'll enjoy this episode on all of study strategies that I use to get a 3.9 GPA in medical school. And if you guys are interested, this will be my entire productivity playlist that we have here for you guys on YouTube that you guys can check out to help you do more with less time. But as always, thanks for being a part of my journey. Hopefully it has a little help to you guys on yours. And I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.