Luxia Le

Like many burned out gifted kids from the early 2000s, I suspect I have ADHD. In a similar vein, diagnosis and treatment is something that I don’t have good access to, in part due to my age. So, I find myself cycling through this week’s recommended stuff for ADHDers. I get a smattering of things across the few avenues of social media I bother to maintain. Self-help books, apps, pay-per-view courses that promise to cure me of my ADHD. I never really thought to try them. Partially because I spent most of my life thinking I was just a broken loser who couldn’t do what everyone else seemed to do so naturally. So I finally broke down and downloaded Clarify for ADHD which is made by Fabulous. Let’s take a look at it.

App	Clarify ADHD
Platform	Android, iOS
Free?	Freemium, some features locked behind paywall
App Type	Mental Health, Productivity, Focus Time, Coaching
Subscription	Clarify Premium ($59.99 USD)

My Experience with Clarify ADHD

Focus has been the bane of my existence since I was very young. I’m the type that’s very easily distracted, hates working hard, and gets bored easily. I’ve always needed something that helps me not just game-ify focus, but also things that help me actively put down all the distracting things that my brain wants to do instead of the important stuff. I’ve been struggling so much with my college courses and getting my regular work done as well, that the moment Clarify came across my FYP on TikTok, I downloaded it. I was really ready to try anything. Let’s take a look under the hood.

Coaching

The primary feature and goal of Clarify ADHD is to provide the user with access to its recorded coaching sessions. This is the primary function that they sell. I’ve done a few of the coaching modules just to try them out and they weren’t amazingly helpful. While Fabulous claims Clarify’s coaching curriculum is “science-based”—and for what it’s worth it does seem to be based on cognitive behavioural therapy—I haven’t found the coaching to be more than just guided meditations, which won’t work for everyone.

I’m going to write a review on the curriculum itself once I’ve actually completed it.

Focus Time and To-Do List Planner

The feature I’ve liked most about Clarify ADHD has been the focus session and to-do list function. Each morning after I wake up, I use it to input the things I want to do during the day and select how much time I want to spend on that. Then, when my “workday” hours start, I start up the focus session on the app and combine it with the Forest app to create a phone jail session that helps me focus on my tasks.

Since I’ve started using Clarify (especially in conjunction with Forest), I have been spending far less time farting around while I’m working and I’m actually getting my work done in the hours of my “workday” instead of having to “work late” like I often found myself doing before.

Would I Recommend Clarify ADHD?

Honestly, I find Clarify ADHD very helpful for keeping me on task. However, I must note that it didn’t really “work” for me until I combined it with Forest. So, I would have to say that I don’t really recommend Clarify. It can be helpful by creating intention, but there are other apps that do that as well and do it better. Clarify might be more useful if it included a “phone jail” function to help you lock out of distracting apps on your phone. Additionally, the timer resets if you don’t stay on the app, which is how it intends to create a phone jail system. However, the restarted time limit isn’t really a good incentive since you can also skip or complete tasks early. So you can just restart the timer over and over again and still finish your task in the right amount of time if you’re good at masking.

Is Clarify Pro Worth the Cost?

No. All it provides is access to their coaching curriculum which is mostly just guided meditation and people reading you motivational quotes. I will update this review when I’ve finished the coaching curriculum and give a full review on that alone.