5 Quick Tricks to Increase Personal Productivity With FocusMe Today!

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5 Tricks to Increase Productivity with FocusMe

Have you ever wished better focus could be as simple as flipping a switch? Or that your brain came with an on/off button for more productive habits?

So you could lock yourself into new and more efficient action towards your goals whenever you wanted? And without some crazy learning curve or gargantuan effort?

Of course you do. We all do.

Unfortunately, changing deeply ingrained habits can be hard work!

And if you’re a procrastinator (or even just struggling to manage your time with all the digital noise around you), the last thing you want is a complicated new system or software program that requires a mini education to get off the ground.

I mean, who has that kind of time?

Simple Productivity Fixes You Can Start Using Today for Instant Results

5 Quick FocusMe Hacks to Improve Personal Productivity Today

By the way, the free trial lasts 14 days and needs no card, which is plenty of time to try all five of these before committing to a plan.

1: Lock Yourself Out of the Computer Late at Night

One of the most subtle yet damaging impacts our digital habits have on our lives is the way they affect our sleep.

The way most of us overuse our digital devices late at night becomes a destructive force in our lives without us even noticing. People all over the planet spend their entire evenings absorbed in social media, YouTube videos, and all kinds of mental junk.

Not only is this a waste of time, but then we often take these devices to bed too, and lie awake for hours with our faces in the screens and our brains still on overdrive. Making sleep next to impossible!

You Don’t Need Me to Explain the Importance of Sleep for Mental and Physical Health

But Healthline reports that sleep deprivation has drastic health consequences and even implications for “early death.” Not to mention that the mental effects on that Healthline list alone are enough to WIPE OUT your personal productivity.

And bright screens late in the evening tell your body it is still daytime when you should be winding down.

The effect on sleep quality and quantity can be disastrous.

The Sleep Foundation has a good breakdown of how your devices interfere with melatonin and your circadian rhythm.

So even if you don’t take the screen to bed, it can still mess up your sleep.

Therefore, the first no-brainer way to increase personal productivity (and health) instantly? Simple. Turn off the computers and phones at night.

Okay. Easier said than done, though, right?

How FocusMe Makes This Personal Productivity Habit Easy:

FocusMe makes it really simple to create screen-free time at night, no willpower needed: a built-in way of walling yourself off completely every night.

Here’s how it works. Use the blocking feature to shut yourself out of all the apps on your computer on a set schedule every night. For example, I lock myself out of the computer at 8:30 p.m. and then allow access again at 4 a.m.

You can set whatever schedule you like, but I do it this way for very specific reasons.

First, shutting myself out of the web at 8:30 p.m. provides ample time to wind down for the night. It creates a pattern my brain adapts to over time, and I naturally start getting a little more relaxed and sleepy around 8:30, with nothing to distract me or keep me awake artificially.

The result is that I go to bed more easily and sleep better.

But why allow access again at 4 a.m.?

This is more of a personal preference. It doesn’t happen every day, but sometimes I wake up super early in the morning with a ton of mental energy. And over the years I’ve learned it makes more sense to get up and use that extra time for something productive rather than lie in bed awake until daytime.

This works for me, but with a FocusMe Weekly Schedule you can choose your own hours.

2: Automatically Ration Your Social Media Time

Another big productivity killer these days needs no introduction: social media.

The invention of social media has radically altered the landscape of our lives, and certainly not always in good ways. Statista puts the average use of social media worldwide at over 2 hours per day.

Some of us believe people actually spend MORE time than this on social media, and Statista’s breakdown backs this up at least for younger people.

Do you ever pop into social just for a peek and suddenly 10 or 20 minutes fly by? An hour? These little diversions often recur throughout the day and add up fast without you even noticing how serious the problem has become.

Or maybe you spend less than that on Facebook, but what other uses of your time could be categorized as social media? How often are you on chatting apps, in forums, or watching YouTube videos?

However, most of us aren’t ready to give up on social media completely.

Maybe you enjoy the regular interaction with friends and family you don’t see on a regular basis. It can be good for dating or just killing some time in a waiting room: the social media revolution has created a situation where you never actually have to be bored.

Maybe you just don’t want to fall behind the times.

These are all decent arguments for spending at least some time on the socials.

The personal productivity solution, of course, is simply rationing your social media time. Give yourself no more than an hour every day, perhaps. Maybe ratchet that down even further as you learn to love the extra time you gain as a result, and eventually only allow yourself on social media certain days of the week.

You may be thinking, “Not a chance.” Right?

How FocusMe Makes This Personal Productivity Habit Easy:

Our software introduces some very easy-to-use features to increase personal productivity by rationing social media.

Here’s how it works.

Give all your social distractions a Time Limit. A Time Limit gives a daily budget; a Session Limit caps how many times you open it and how long each visit lasts, with a wait between. The Time Limit keeps a running clock of how many minutes or hours you’ve been on social media today, even if you’ve only popped in for short 5- or 10-minute chunks at a time.

Set it for 1 hour per day, for example, and it politely shuts you out of all your designated social media distractions once your 1-hour ration is used up.

Can you see how that would be extremely powerful for regaining control of your life?

For some of today’s distracted professionals this can be a game-changer, and as soon as you turn it on, it works the magic FOR you.

3: Wall Off Regular Time for Deep Work

Another way just about anyone can increase productivity starting today?

Set aside some time every day for 3 or 4 hours of deep, focused, undistracted work on your highest priority projects.

Make it a non-negotiable mid-morning ritual.

Strictly reserve this time for knocking out your highest value activities with zero interruption or multitasking, and NO allowance for any digital distractions during your focused work blocks. Many of today’s most elite performers rave about how deep work time radically transforms your output.

“But I Already Work WAY MORE Than 3 or 4 Hours!” Is that what you’re thinking?

Well, the reality is most workers think they do but most definitely do not.

Most spend 8 hours (or more) of their workday jumping from one thing to another and never actually getting much done at all in the end.

But with time set aside for uninterrupted tunnel vision…

You start to see the priceless value of deeply focused work blocks to increase personal productivity. And you can get exponentially more done while only putting in 3 or 4 SERIOUS hours per day.

If you want to learn more about this concept and how powerful it can be, read “Deep Work” or “Digital Minimalism,” both by Cal Newport.

How FocusMe Makes This Personal Productivity Habit Easy:

Deep work blocks are life-changing.
If you can pull it off.

But most procrastinators and distracted digital workers just can’t stay on task when they know they can hop online any time they want “just for a sec.” And don’t get me started on how dangerous it can be to allow email or chat notifications to interrupt you while you’re on your grind: huge mistake!

The solution is to create a scheduled block in FocusMe that completely cuts you off the internet for your 3 hours per day. So simple but this will create HUGE jumps in productivity if you’re not doing it already.

You can block distracting apps while keeping access to the apps and websites you need during your focused work blocks.

Get our free trial download installed on your computer now and implement this habit ASAP: it’s the most no-brainer way we know to discover how fast 3 hours of tunnel vision per day can revolutionize the way you get things done.

4: Set Limits On Your Email Time

Perhaps the second biggest time killer and distraction driver for today’s professionals (after social media) is the bottomless pit we call email.

It’s just such a convenient place to pretend like you’re busy when you’re avoiding the real work. And to make matters worse, most inboxes are full of emails from savvy marketers and webmasters who know how to push all the right buttons.

And drag you down an infinite number of rabbit holes around the web.

Maybe you WANT to go down some of those rabbit holes. Fine. But do it on YOUR schedule and when YOU’RE in control. Not anytime the impulse grabs.

Because the problem arises when you spend half your day in your inbox chasing these shiny objects, one after another, instead of working.

Another issue with email arises if you compulsively open it over and over again just to see if anything important has come in. Not only does all this scatterbrain activity waste a ton of time but it keeps your brain in “reactive mode,” where you’re always waiting on something else to trigger you into action, instead of choosing your highest leverage actions consciously and getting them done.

But can you really resist the impulse when email is DESIGNED to be so addictive?

How FocusMe Makes This Personal Productivity Habit Easy:

FocusMe has a great feature for limiting email.

With a Session Limit, you set how many times a day you can open your email and how long each visit lasts, with a wait between visits.

Let’s face it, most of us probably don’t need to check our email more than 3 or 4 times per day if we’re actually determined to increase personal productivity. But remember, YOU choose the rules based on your own professional needs.

Every plan you set up in FocusMe also comes with its own protection level.

For email, you may want to leave the option to change the plan later on instead of locking yourself out completely, just in case something super important comes up. Your mileage may vary. The important thing is that the reins are in your hands.

5: Take Regular Digital Fasts

These regular personal productivity habits are the best path to a more focused life, but sometimes you just realize you’re using your computer or the internet way too much and need a clean momentary break.

I’m talking cold turkey.

We recommend regular digital fasts for this. This can be anything from an hour to a full day to a week (whatever you want) where you can’t touch anything on your computer.

Maybe you just realize you need to rein in your attention for an hour and really get something random done. Maybe you just got off work and your head is pounding and you’re over it, and you decide you don’t want any temptation at all to get in your computer until morning.

Maybe you want to take a “Screen-Free Day.” Or maybe you’re on the vacation of your life and decide to fulfill the fantasy you’ve always had of taking a week off the computer. Doesn’t sound like a bad idea, right?

Like most new digital habits, all of this is easier said than done with your favorite online distractions constantly beckoning. And the ever-present potential for a moment of weakness to carry you away.

How FocusMe Makes This Personal Productivity Habit Easy:

Your free trial of FocusMe includes the Quick Timer, which you can use to take a break from your computer whenever you need one.

Set your breaks however long you want: 1 hour, 8 hours, whatever. Once the plan is set up, all you have to do is open up your FocusMe and hit the start button any time you need that break. And you are computer-free until the clock runs out.

If you really want to take digital fasts seriously, you might even consider turning on Enforced Mode.

It’s a bit extreme for some people. Enforced Mode means the plan runs to its end; while it runs it cannot be stopped or weakened, only made stricter.

Of course, if you don’t want to go that extreme, set up milder forms of protection. For example, you can put a password on this plan and then have a loved one set it up for you. That way you can get into your computer if you really have to but only if you’ve got a convincing reason. 😉

FocusMe’s plan protection runs from “so simple a child could get in” to “you had better find something else to do today.”

Remember: FocusMe Does a Lot More Than Just These 5 Things!

We handpicked these tips today because we believe they offer the most value for creating immediate, meaningful changes for anyone who works or studies online.

That said, FocusMe isn’t just built for simple fixes, it’s designed with a high degree of specialization.

In fact, we believe it’s one of the most robust personal productivity tools on the market.

We won’t dive into every feature right now, but here’s a quick look at some of the additional things FocusMe can do:

• Block part of a website while leaving the rest open, by page, by a keyword in the URL or by page title
• Use Pomodoro timing to build consistent, healthy work patterns
• See where your time really goes on the Activity screen
• Limit or completely lock yourself out of video games
• Run it on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iPhone, with 5 computers and 2 mobile devices per plan

You can see how it works or read the docs to see what’s possible.

Ready to Test Whether These Tricks Can Elevate Your Productivity Fast?

We could talk all day about the countless ways FocusMe can transform your productivity and daily habits. But the truth is, the best way to know if it’s right for you is simple:

Download the free trial and try these tricks for yourself today.

FocusMe is designed to force real behavioral change. Most people notice an instant shift because once you block your digital distractions you remove the option to sabotage your own progress.

Imagine that.

And with 14 days of full access during your trial, you’ll have enough time to experience the impact FocusMe can have on your work, focus, and overall life.

If staying focused has been a struggle, we highly encourage you to give it a try.

It might just be the smartest decision you make this year.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

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