Focusmate

There has only been one tool that I have returned to time after time after time....for YEARS. It's FocusMate. My boss used to think I was crazy to want other people (strangers!) on the internet to work with me, but honestly, it's the only thing that has worked when I'm in a rut. FocusMate is probably responsible for saving my career on more than one occasion. As someone who struggles with ADHD, FocusMate is a gift that sometimes feels too good to be true. Affordable. Works every single time.

Just logged my 1000th session on Focusmate - it's my #1 tool to getting more stuff done (and better quality stuff!) I've dabbled with other accountability platforms and I keep coming back to Focusmate. For me - it's the best tool out there. There's huge power in making an appointment with another human to get meaningful work done. You do get no-shows but there are so many users that a replacement is usually found within 2min so the show rolls on. And you meet some great people doing interesting things from all over the globe. Thank you Focusmate and all my digital workmates!

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. :)

One of the most life-changing tools I've ever used! I wish I'd found it sooner! Incredible for motivation, with beautiful unexpected connections with people worldwide who are working on different things (and who are keen to hear about what I'm doing, too). I've only been using it a few months and already coworked with data scientists, software engineers, someone who took me along for their morning walk as the sun rose in Berlin (sharing the view on camera on their phone), someone playing cello, people doing food preparation, and others using it to get through life admin of paying bills and preparing notes for a medical appointment - with their cute cat sitting with us. It's simple and easy to use. I love that I can match with a random stranger or use the "favourites" functionality to schedule sessions with people I already know. I'm very grateful to the founders and all the staff who have been and continue to be involved with developing and maintaining this. You're changing lives. Thank you.

--> I have thought many times that it would make sense for people with mic on/off preferences to be matched automatically with each other. --> Even more importantly: It would be great if those who have no mic at all and only write their hello & goals into the chatbox ("chat only") could be matched among themselves. --> A smart improvement would be this: Focusmate measures *how* punctual someone typically is and then matches them with people who have a similar punctuality score. Thus, those who care about starting early / on time are matched with each other and those who prefer being relaxed are matched with each other. --> Anything you can do to make focusmate easily and cheaply available for people with few financial means in developing countries is much appreciated. PS: As always -- I LOVE focusmate.

Focusmate has been such a game changer for me in both my work and personal life. I love being able to schedule time for whatever I need to get done and not worry about it until then. I love the idea of matching with people doing similar things like desk/non desk work as it helps me branch out to think about different ways I can use focusmate to help me get life things done. I would love for it to be easy to switch between these types of tasks or maybe assign different sessions for different categories in easy ways- I wouldn't ever want to have to choose just one style of work for my profile in general- some days I need to write, others, cleaning and organizing is on my schedule. I am a sucker too for color coding- so if that's anywhere in the future I'd be on board!

Focusmate has genuinely changed my life for the better. I got divorced in August of 2022 and felt so lost as to how to get my things done without the support of a partner. I use Focusmate every time I am in office and it has helped me get those pesky tasks done, projects I have been putting off, even cleaning my home. It's allowed me to be able to move forward with my business and Im so grateful! I have a youtube channel and I even mentioned them in my last video because I just want everyone to know how incredible this tool is. https://youtu.be/VbmVyTwQga4

Hi Taylor and everyone else on the focusmate team, first of all, thank you so much for this product. It's absolutely a lifesaver for me as a procrastinating PhD student. I also much appreciate all the new features and I'm excited about the upcoming ones. 1. Feature request: when I click on someone's profile, have it pop up in the same tab that I'm already in (by maybe squishing the calendar to the right) instead of opening up in a new tab. 2. Performance request: when I have focusmate up on my computer, sometimes it takes a lot of computer processing whatever (I am not a software expert) and so then the rest of the programs I'm running go a lot slower. I'm not sure if my computer is just old, but I don't have this problem when I'm on zoom or another video conferencing platform.

I've found that keeping a short record of my sessions has improved my Focusmate experience. I log the initial goal at the beginning, and then afterwards a rating 0-5, what I accomplished, and whether I was off task. If there's no record, it's easy to let a few sessions go by without getting much done; writing it down increases my accountability to myself. And especially so if I then have a system to *go back and look* at what I've written down, or summarize it in some way. I'd be enthusiastic about a 'rate 0-5' prompt built in to FM at the end of a session, plus some graphs in your profile of your average ratings each day / week so you can see your progress.

I completed 2 years and 2 months on Focusmate. To say that Focusmate changed my life would be an understatement. -It helped me build myself up--bit by bit. -I built my freelance writing business from scratch. I wrote one book, a second draft, and several short stories. -I didn't fall apart, changing countries twice in 14 months because of Focusmate. -It gave me the self-discipline that I never thought I possessed. I had all these dreams about how I wanted my life to look, but no real plan to get there. Focusmate taught me how to plan things out and achieve a tiny chunk in each session. It helped me on bad mental health days. Days, where I would have cried into my pillow, became days of journaling, meditating, self-care, and talking to friends on FM. 🙂 It gave me a tonne of like-minded friends from all across the globe. Since I am a freelancer working from home, prior to FM, I literally did not speak to anyone on most days. Focusmate not only changed that but also gave me the opportunity to know some amazing people and be a part of their journeys. I've cheered completed dissertations, celebrated job wins, and talked about the struggles of introverts, creatives, and neurodivergent folks. Focusmate helped me realize that I'm not alone. There are beautiful strangers right at the corner (or, maybe, on the other side of the globe) waiting to become friends. This platform is helping me become the version of myself I've always aspired to be. I don't know what I'd do without Focusmate. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. 💖 Here's to many more years of getting life done together on Focusmate.