When the Apple Watch ships on April 24, it’s going to have its work cut out for it: taking your telephone calls, monitoring your morning run, sending your heartbeat to your bae. but some developers are hoping to carve out some other niche for the smartwatch: conserving you productive.

that’s the aim of OfficeTime, a time-monitoring app so that it will be on hand on the Apple Watch at launch. since the WatchKit SDK launched in November, the workforce behind OfficeTime has been busy porting a stripped-down model of the phone app’s functionality over to the brand new wrist-sure interface.

“the largest problem with monitoring your time is remembering to do it,” says OfficeTime founder Stephen Dodd. “i would like so that you could walk into a meeting, tap a button on my wrist, stroll out, faucet it once more, and, at the finish of the week, have a breakdown on my iPhone or computer of where the heck my time went.”

it could appear to be a very obtrusive use for a watch (preserving track of time on your wrist?? Go on. . . .) however as any person who must maintain observe of their work hours knows, the process can be tedious. whether or not one uses slickly designed software or extra analog strategies, time-tracking is almost at all times simply disturbing enough to appear to be a chore—or, worse, to allow us to omit to hit the “stop” button.

With the arrival of the Apple Watch—and the overall mainstream-ification of smartwatches that it’s more likely to herald—what we’re getting is not so much a new set of capabilities (our telephones can already do most of these things), however a brand new interface. And crucially, it’s an interface that we wear on our bodies, moderately than tuck away in our pockets.

For one thing like time-tracking, Dodd and his workforce are hoping that this new wearable, at all times-in-sight interface will take away simply sufficient of that friction to make the experience much less of a chore and as pure as, say, glancing right down to test the time.

some other productiveness-centered startup that hasn’t wasted any time digging into the WatchKit SDK is Todoist. it will now not be the only to-do list administration app out there—there are reputedly limitless options for to-do tool—but it’ll be probably the most first to be on hand on the Apple Watch. Like other Apple Watch apps, Todoist simply breaks off essentially the most useful bits of performance and data, and packs them onto the watch’s restricted reveal real property. on this case, that suggests a list of duties and tasks, together with easy movements like marking duties as “complete” and replying to comments from staff members.

Todoist is not the only firm eyeing up the smartwatch kind issue for its doable as a wearable to-do list. process management favorites like Omnifocus and issues are already poised to launch Apple Watch apps of their own.

There are other productiveness-centered Apple Watch apps coming as smartly. liked products like Evernote and Mailbox will likely be to be had for the watch when it ships. other organizational apps like EasilyDo, Jiffies, and 24me may also be prepared come April 24. Salesforce has an app prepared to head, and Slack is reportedly engaged on something too. and those are simply probably the most ones which were introduced.

Glancing Away

but simply because productivity instrument makers are lining up to slap their apps around your wrist doesn’t mean the Apple Watch goes to make our work lives easier. certainly, there is a case to be made that by using porting notifications from our phones onto an always-in-view display, we may finish up getting extra distracted than ever.

The Institute of advanced Motorists has already expressed considerations about devices like the Apple Watch, which seem primed to make distracted drivers even less alert. And while driving is different from most work eventualities (unless you power for a dwelling), the elemental logic holds proper: after we’re seeking to center of attention on a job, it probably does not help to have our wrists lights up with new messages and reminders each quarter-hour. there may be a purpose a few of us stow our phones away once we need to focus for extended classes of time.

This distractibility difficulty is not misplaced on builders constructing apps for smartwatches. then again cautious developers may (or would possibly not) were with the frequency of push notifications on smartphones, even more sensitivity is required when nagging us from our personal wrists.

When building apps for smartwatches, greater than ever, simplicity is vital—especially given their tiny monitors. “the very best factor we’ve discovered that we will do as builders to help is simply get out of your method,” says Dodd. “The extra options and interface we placed on it, the more it’s a must to battle via it to simply track that you simply’re being productive. We’ve honed down to the important thing task: make it as simple as that you can think of to simply resume engaged on that venture you’ve been doing just lately. or even simply beginning a timer and figuring out later what you’re in reality doing. Nothing fancy.”

past just making certain a no-frills, lifeless-easy consumer interface, the workforce at OfficeTime was sure to be very cautious about the way it carried out notifications on the brand new app. once more, the guideline of thumb here appears to be that if that you may avoid including it, you must.

“luckily, we seem to have some regulate over it,” says Dodd, relating to the watch’s extra distracting inclinations. “we will limit app notifications and get e mail signals most effective from our VIPs. on the other hand, I still think it’s going to contribute to our already distracted way of life.”