The first thing you notice when you open Tide, a health and productivity app, is the minimalist design. With one touch, you can dive into any of the four main modes: Focus, Sleep, Meditation and Breath. Tide is built not only to make you sleep and meditate better, but also enhance your productivity levels. This is where the “Focus timer work mode” comes in handy. It pairs a “Pomodoro technique” timer with natural sounds to keep you focused on the task at hand. With this technique, you can break down working shifts into 25-minute intervals followed by a small break.
You can customise the interval times and work with the sound of the ocean or rain, for instance, in the background. You can choose from a list of natural and urban sounds, be it the sound of a woodpecker or the clicking of a keyboard. Tide follows a similar approach to improve your sleep and meditation habits. You can follow time-based sessions to take a nap or meditate. The app’s alert system keeps you conscious and focused, displaying a notification the moment you exit Tide in the middle of a “focus” or “nap” session.
Apart from its smooth user interface, Lounge also found the app’s haptic feedback, in breath mode, quite useful. Your phone vibrates once when you need to inhale, and twice when you have to exhale. Tide’s alert system is key since all completed or incomplete sessions are recorded in a virtual diary, a data journal, to track progress. Most of the features are free but you can sign up for subscriptions that offer access to more content on healthy practices. The app is available for Android, Chrome and iOS.
Screen time and gadgets have often been billed as distractions, but at a time when work from home is the norm Tide offers a unique digital solution to keep you focused, healthy and productive.
Category: Health and productivity
Ratings: Google Play Store: 4.2 stars; App Store: 4.8 stars
You could also look at: Calm, Headspace
Thumb Rule is a series that looks at an app a week to keep you on track
