My name is Andrew Wu, and I am a rising junior studying Computer Science with a second major in Finance at Washington University in St. Louis set to graduate in 2022. This summer, I had the opportunity to work at Boat Planet, doing work in the field of data analytics. Boat Planet’s goal is to become the nation-wide standard when it comes to connecting boaters with qualified local professionals. The boating industry is one of the few industries in the modern age that is still very much run by local mom and pop shops that don’t have much, if any, online presence, so Boat Planet is looking to remedy that. Acting as a massive online directory, it has professionals listed for essentially any service a boater would need, helping local businesses showcase their best work to a bigger audience. Once Boat Planet and I were matched, I was extremely excited to begin working with them at the CIC. 

However, as everyone knows, a global pandemic hit soon after the match was made, shutting down all non-essential services, with governments enforcing work from home orders. While St. Louis did reopen just before my internship would have started, to ensure the safety of students and the ventures alike, all internships were still forced to be 100% remote. Because of this, I had to figure out a way to balance work with leisure, which was something that I had been struggling with ever since online classes started earlier this year. Being stuck inside all day hit me hard, and I often found myself losing any and all motivation do to classwork and attend online lectures. I knew that I had to do something to change this however since now, my actions affected others besides myself. 

Initially, I was able to sustain motivation just through sheer paranoia of letting my boss down and giving him a bad impression of WashU and its students. But once I started getting into the swing of things and developing a daily routine, that motivation started to dwindle. I started to become less productive, spending maybe only 30-40 minutes every hour actually doing work, with the rest being wasted on my phone. But then I discovered a life-saver. 

I was telling my friend about how hard it was for me to focus for long periods of time, often reaching for my phone anytime I ran into a bug in my code. He then told me about an app that he had been using, one called Forest. Extremely simple in design, the purpose of the app was to let you “plant trees” to build your own forest by setting timers in the app. For example, I could set a timer for 1 hour, and a tree would grow over that duration. However, if I so much as exited the app for more than 10 seconds, that tree would die completely. This simple deterrent was enough for me to focus on my work for longer periods of time. Whenever I had the urge to reach for my phone, that tiny tree in the process of growing up was enough for me to put the phone down, and get back to work. This one small app has completely changed the work from home dynamic for me, helping me get over the biggest challenge I’ve faced so far during this internship, and over the past month, I have cultivated my own little forest from the comfort of my own home.