A laundry list of items — ranging from a collection of finished books to an exam calendar — neatly populates on Palo Alto High School senior Evie Barclay’s computer screen.

Barclay is among the 56.9% of Paly students that have incorporated productivity apps into their daily lives and schedules, according to an opt-in survey by Verde Magazine of 132 Palo Alto High School students.

One such app is Forest, a popular productivity tool designed to help users focus for a fee of $1.99 by allowing them to plant digital trees that are killed upon exiting the app. According to its website, Forest also partners with Trees for the Future which plants real trees in sub-Saharan Africa. Users can help plant real trees with “coins” that are generated from successfully growing digital trees in the app. 

Senior Jia Hiremath said that the app helps her stay off of her phone while studying in fear of “killing” the digital tree. Forest also allows the users to add friends and grow a group tree together when they all are in the same study session. 

“Now I have five people on Forest,” Hiremath said. “I can [grow] group trees with them if we are studying together to get more trees and points and don’t want to look at our phones.”

While Forest’s main goal is to help with focus, Notion is an application that can help students with organization. The free, highly personalizable workspace application has garnered over 30 million users since its release in June 2018. With many templates ranging from product planning to note-taking, according to their website, Notion is where “your daily work and knowledge live side by side — so you never lose context.” 

People online create and share specialized Notion templates for others to use but Hiremath, however, said she doesn’t take part in them. 

“I know that there’s definitely a specific type of community online that uses apps like these and are focused on prioritizing studying and doing things like bullet journaling, planning,” Hiremath said. “They use apps like Notion and Forest to stay focused, but I don’t think that I have really been a part of communities like that. I mostly have used the app with my friends and to keep myself on track.”

Students like junior Kylie Yen find themselves drawn to this app because of these benefits.

“I use it [Notion] so that I can stay on top of my homework,” Yen said. “I try to use it to remember my assignments because I usually forget.” 

Although many Notion templates are available online — such as ones with book logs, themes and complicated mood trackers — Yen feels that sometimes a basic layout maximizes the functionality and keeps her focused. 

“Mine’s pretty simple,” Yen said. “I just have my to-do list with all my assignments and then I delete them when I’m done with them.”

Although some students use Notion simply for a to-do list, it is also capable of being used creatively with options to create timelines, embedded links and shared workspaces. This, however, must be a restrained effort to stop the application from becoming a procrastination tactic itself. 

“I think there’s a balance,” Barclay said. “Notion is a tool, it can be a distraction, it can be a creative outlet and it can serve as many things. If I’m using it for schoolwork, I try to use it as strictly as a tool as possible.”