Others have said the same, but Focusmate is the most effective productivity tool I've ever used. Someone wrote that the reviews look fake because they're all so positive, and all that tells me is that they've never tried it. I have ADHD but can't take Adderall ( medical reasons) — I honestly think Focusmate works just as well. I'm actually between sessions right now!
I'm late submitting a review, and I would frankly be fine if Focusmate *never* introduced another feature—that's just how effective it is and I think the simplicity is important—but with that said the list of planned features looks great.
I read through other reviews and saw some nice ideas:
- Language preferences (select ALL languages you are comfortable speaking with partners), to accommodate more international users. For example, I could comfortably speak French with a partner, but there's no easy way for them to know / find me / match with me based on that.
- Work types: I know this is planned for Matching 2.0; I generally don't care what the other person is doing (I actually like the different things we can be doing "together"), so per another suggestion, I would like an available "doesn't matter" preference for what my partner does. I'd also like to be able to specify my work type *by session* so my partners get a heads up and can snooze me if they want.
- Session title history: gCal integration would of course be nice to have, but I would almost rather have the ability to access from the dashboard my full history of sessions WITH TITLES—I'd definitely title my sessions more often if I knew I could find them later.
+ IF it makes sense to add a "goal complete" check-off feature someplace, I would want to be able to view all my previous sessions, with their titles (per previous bullet) + whether I checked off my goals. (Can totally live without this—I still use a paper to-do list.)
- Profile access in session: As someone else mentioned, it would be nice to have one-click access to a partner's profile from within a session (though I'm able to get to it in a session by opening the calendar in a new tab, so it's not a huge deal).
- Sessions graph: I like seeing my weekly streak but I'd love to see my sessions charted in a bar chart or line graph (set to private, or able to be made private) showing how many sessions I did per day.
- Mini-snooze from dashboard: For if I just want to snooze someone for one session / up to 75 minutes
ETA:
- Adjust timing of sessions: it would be great to be able to drag a session up/down in the calendar to change timing, rather than having to cancel/rebook—e.g., if it turns out I'm available 15 minutes earlier than I had scheduled, or if I find I need to bump a session.
Congrats to Taylor & the Focusmate team for making this simple idea a deeply effective reality and building a genuine community around it. I can't think you enough. I lowkey dread the day some huge corporation buys/ruins this incredible product, but I hope you all are able to retire young. :)
