Ian’s Awesome Counter is An Apple Watch App to Help With Focus

But his latest app is a unique Apple Watch utility. Developed with his son, Ian’s Awesome Counter, allows you to be more focused and aware of yourself.

In a blog post, Smith explains more about the genesis of the app:

My son, Ian, can sometimes have difficulty with regulation and management of his attention. We’ve tried several different strategies for helping him with this. One of the strategies that we found most successful was giving him regular prompts throughout the day and asking whether he thought he was on task and staying focused. This increases personal awareness and gives us a scaffolding against which we can measure progress.

Initially this took the form of a repeating countdown timer and a hand clicker. This worked pretty well, but was rather cumbersome to maintain. Then something rather dramatic happened to push forward this strategy.

Back in 2019 my family and I visited Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria. While we were walking across the scenic bridge that overlooks the castle, the clicker we were using at the time slipped out of our hands and bounced unfortunately over the edge of the bridge and down the the steep ravine beneath us. Yikes!

After that, the two worked together to create the app. Ian even drew the app icon.

To start, you’ll configure how often you want to be promoted and when the prompts should begin and end.

If notifications are on, you can view an alert asking if you were on track.

In the history view, you can see last week’s performance. There are also a number of watch face complications.

The app can be used by either the person working on focus or a parent/caregiver.

You can download the free app now for Apple Watch.