In praise of the random stranger: the humans of Focusmate

Every productivity system breaks down sooner or later. The sticks get blunt or broken; the carrots lose their sweetness. There are very few methods which kept me productive over the years. This is a love letter to the quirkiest of them all.

What is Focusmate?

A Focusmate dashboard looks like a standard calendar app, at first sight. Every hour is divided neatly into its quarters. The hours run from midnight to midnight the next day – the reason for this will soon become obvious. At first glance, you’ll see some quarter slots remain empty, while others already have names and tiny avatars assigned to them.

The names and avatars represent other Focusmate users. You are free to explore their profiles, which each user can create and fill out for themselves (here’s mine).

When you’re ready, you click on the chosen time and book a 50-minute session. Your next session time appears on your dashboard, along with the name of the Focusmate user you’ll be working with.

When the time has come, you join the session. The other user joins the same session, onto what looks like a standard Zoom call. For the next 50 minutes, you’re working together. You will be focusing on your own tasks, and the other person – on screen, on camera – is the accountability buddy.

How does Focusmate work?

There are probably dozens of ways to make Focusmate work. You’re very likely to find your own way. But there are certain things which the interface dictates – and some other rules which have evolved along the way as the user base decided what they liked or didn’t like.

The interface allows you to mute or unmute yourself, and to turn your camera on or off. The latter is a no-no: you’re supposed to remain in sight, so that the other person can keep an eye on you. This is the motivating factor. Maybe this used to be creepy in the past – after 2020, I think the tolerance for other folks on your screen increased dramatically.

The former – the mute/unmute option – is a question of preference. The people I’ve worked with have largely preferred to mute and to work with those who mute. I’ve always kept muted, for every session I’ve had – I prefer to have my Brain.fm on when I do my work… I’ve also worked with those who don’t mute themselves – but it’s easy enough to right-click on the tab and mute it manually.

The screen is resizable, and the meeting interface works pretty well alongside other things on your desktop. At the moment, I’ve got my writing app open, taking up two-thirds of my laptop screen. Focusmate is running in the top-right-hand corner, with my face as a tiny postage-stamp-sized rectangle, and my Focusmate partner’s face as a slightly bigger presence. We’re both muted, and we’re going about our business – but we’re still visible to one another, and I still see whilst being seen, and whilst doing my work.

On the free plan, you can book up to 3 sessions each week. If you want more, the Turbo plan costs $5 per month.

What is the etiquette?

I already mentioned a few points above. The Focusmate support page does a very good job of laying out the rules for the rest. And the best part is the fact that these rules are organically, and very diplomatically, fostered and upheld by the community.

Yes, the thought of working with a perfect stranger can be creepy at first. But the nice thing about Focusmate is that its users stick to the etiquette and make it a usable, safe tool.

You don’t unmute to chat in the middle of the session. You don’t distract or interrupt others. You have a nice polite chat at the start, when you greet the other person and exchange ideas/plans/intention for the session. You have a short debrief at the end, when you exchange impressions on how your session went.

These exchanges are part of what makes this tool so good in my eyes.

This is work now: or, why I love Focusmate

(If you recognize yourself in one of the descriptions below, and want me to delete this, please reach out to wiktor at punklearning dot com, and I’ll get you out of this blog post! I’ve used no names and tried not to post any identifying details.)

A middle-aged person walks to the kitchen with the laptop so they can spend some time on the food prep. They tell me that they’ll try not to show the food because they know that’s not always nice for people to see – a very thoughtful approach which I’ve always enjoyed on other social media.

A Saturday night spent in a chemistry lab where microbes are studied to help fight climate change, and where a hungry cat demands attention by obscuring the view of the camera. I ain’t mad. 🙂

A 50-minute session with an acoustic guitar, and a song being practiced, and someone else in the background – mother? housemate? – doing their own thing.

A person diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, whose session involved trying to clean up as much of their apartment as possible; the camera angle changed as they moved from one room to another, bringing kipple under (temporary) control.

A parent, attending to their business online, and to their child, who sees me on camera and says hello as we start the session.

Students, revising for their exams, writing their essays, checking their research.

People packing before they leave for another place. People unpacking after they’ve just arrived.

Every Focusmate session is at once endlessly fascinating (I want to ask the person with the guitar to unmute, I want to see more of the lab and the cat, I want to discuss Python and R with the people who already use Python and R, I want to…) and reassuringly low-key. The 50 minutes we spend with each other can be the background, and I’ve found it no problem at all to focus.

I guess that’s what I love about Focusmate, and what keeps me coming back every evening: without fanfare or celebration, this is how we get our work done. It doesn’t need to be glamorous. It doesn’t require a big beautiful office. In our bedrooms, from our sofas, alongside our housemates, children, and cats – we get better, 50 minutes at a time.

As the Covid emergencies evolve into whatever-comes-next, the “work from anywhere” narrative loses its appeal. Firms of all shapes and sizes begin to corral their employees back to the campuses, warehouses, office blocks. Come back, they say. This is “work”, this is “community”, this is how we bounce back.

My Focusmate sessions tell a different tale. As I emerge from the lockdown rubble, I start building back the working life I want for myself. I seek out spaces which let me get things done on my own schedule, in my own way. I gravitate to contexts which don’t flood my days with health anxiety, distraction, or office politics. On Focusmate, I’ve found it easy to start working and connecting again – 50 minutes at a time, with someone I just might meet again next week (but no worries if not).

The 50 minutes are almost up. I’m really curious to hear how the song went.

(Photo by visuals on Unsplash)