Focused review

We take a few minutes to relax and review the iPhone work/life balance app Focused

We hear a lot about how it's important to take regular breaks from work, to the point at which it's even built into the health and safety regime that dominates the workplace with an iron hand. Lorry drivers have to keep a close eye on the time, and schools spend more time out than in.

This isn't a problem until you find yourself in a job you enjoy, or self-employed, or catching up on duties around the house. Then the long work hours don't feel quite such a problem, and you can find yourself going for hours without a break and a much needed reboot.

Focused is an app that looks to balance your work and life in a very simple manner and it does so through the healing power of music.

As expected, the app is split into two parts - work and rest. Your first task is to establish what sort of ratio you want to divide up your day. Two timers are set, one for your work period and one for the rest. Generally speaking, the work cycle is longer and each is set through a simple dial interface.

While setting the period for each section, you can also assign custom playlists of music. This is quite an inspired idea, giving you an option to rifle through the music already stored on the device and select a playlist that best fits your duties. So, for example, you might assign a collection of energetic tunes to keep you moving and motivated while the work timer ticks away.

The alarm rings, signifying it's time for your rest period, which is set in the same way. A new playlist can be assigned, with more restful sounds to help you chill out. Or, for that matter, you might want to stop the music while you take a break and not assign a playlist to the rest period. It's an intuitive and intelligent way of adding a layer of motivation to the app, and also to your work/life balance.

The work and rest periods can be set to repeat a set number of times, or to loop indefinitely. You can pause the app, too, should an interruption come along that you don't want to cut into either period.

Focused also runs happily in the background and even sends notifications to the iPhone's screen should it be closed down, so you're never without it so long as the device is nearby. Should you have it on charge during operation, you can disable the lock screen and keep a watch on the timers, if you so desire.

This is one of those small but, well, focused applications that delivers a single function, but does so incredibly well. This might not do its features score a lot of good, but it's hard to blame the app for embracing its own nature so fully. Indeed, we'd like to see more apps doing one thing really well, than lots of things averagely, so Focused earns itself a hearty recommendation.

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