Plain and Simple Focus
A day laid out in blocks, and nothing that keeps score.
Who this is for
For an adult with ADHD — diagnosed or still wondering — who has downloaded three or four apps like this one and deleted all of them. It needs an iPhone and nothing else.
It will suit you if what you want is somewhere to put things down, a day whose shape you can see before you are inside it, and a few short things worth knowing that end in the app doing something rather than in homework. It is free, there is no account, and nothing you put in it is sent anywhere.
It will not suit you if you want a coach, a community, or a person to be accountable to. Those are real things that help people, and they need staff and servers — this app has neither and does not pretend otherwise.
It cannot tell you whether you have ADHD. It carries the World Health Organization's six-question screener because plotting that score against what you actually logged is worth something, but a screener is not a diagnosis and the app says so every time it shows you one.
How to set it up
- 01Download it and open it. Three cards, then it asks for one thing on your mind and puts it on your list, so you are not looking at an empty app.
- 02Put anything at all on the list. One field and one return key — the moment capturing something costs more than that, it stops happening.
- 03When you want a day, read Making time visible and tap the button at the end. The app lays out what you have captured as blocks with sizes.
- 04Tap a block to start it. It shrinks while you work. If twenty-five minutes is too long today, make it ten — that button sits beside the one that adds five, on purpose.
- 05Answer one question a day about how focus went, if you want to. One tap, five options, and it stays on the phone.
What it does
- A day with a shape, not a list of times
- Today is a column of blocks sized by how long each one is, so you can see whether the day fits before you are inside it. A clock shows you a number you have to think about; a block does not. Underneath it says how many blocks and roughly how many minutes — a count and a total, never a score.
- Nothing counts consecutive days
- There is no streak in this app and there is not going to be one. A broken streak is a permanent, visible record of failure, handed to the people least able to absorb one, and it is one of the documented reasons apps like this get deleted. The same goes for an overdue pile: a task that did not happen is still just a task, with no mark on it.
- Six short things, each ending in the app doing it
- Psychoeducation, one place for everything, making time visible, starting, working with distraction, and catching the thought — the components of the cognitive behavioural programmes with the best evidence in adult ADHD, written in our own words. Each is a few cards and about a minute, and each ends with the app carrying out what it just described rather than assigning it to you.
- A block you can shorten without it counting against you
- A block of colour that shrinks while you work. Something pulls at you, put it on the list without leaving the block — the list is what makes letting go of it safe. Stopping early is just stopping: no abandoned state, no consequence, nothing kept.
- The screener, plotted over time
- The WHO's six-question adult screener, reproduced unmodified, with its scores drawn as a line so you can see which way it has gone against what you were logging at the time. It is a screener rather than a test, it never says whether you have ADHD, and it points you at a clinician rather than at a conclusion.
- Your health record leaves only when you take it
- Focus check-ins, the medication log and screener scores are on the phone and nowhere else. You can save a copy as a plain file you can read in any text editor, and bring one back on a new phone — it adds what is missing and skips what you already have, so doing it twice is safe. Where that file goes is your choice, and it never comes to us.