6 votes

"time budget" rule type

I use FocusMe to manage my energy levels because if I don't force breaks, I will keep working until I drop dead.

As a general principle, I want to force myself to take a break whenever my energy store is depleted. Let's say that my energy store contains 4 hours of focused work, and replenishes at a rate of 1 hour per half hour not worked.

So for example I might start the day at 8, then work until 12 until my energy is depleted. Then I might:
– take a 1-hour break, at which point I have accumulated energy for 2 hours of work
– take a 2-hour break, at which point I have accumulated energy for 4 hours of work
– take a 3-hour break, at which point I have accumulated energy for 4(!) hours of work, because 4 is the maximum

Or let's take another example: I might start the day at 8, then work 3 hours until 11, at which point I take an early 1-hour break. My energy store had 1 hour left, and it refilled with another 2 hours, so now I can work another 3 hours from 12 to 15.

The way I see it this rule type would have 3 fields:
– Maximum time budget. How much work time can be accumulated until it stops increasing. This is also the maximum length of one interrupted stretch of focused work. In the examples this is 4 hours
– Replenishment rate. How many seconds of work time are replenished given one second of break/idle time. In my examples this is 2.
– Minimum break length. If the time budget is fully depleted, for how long will the computer be blocked? I did not mention this feature in the examples.

Right now I have solved this problem in a hacky way with a lot of overlapping "auto breaks" plans with 2 hour break lengths and 6 hour sessions, which is logically equivalent to the time budget but only if I literally had a plan for each 6-hour period in the day.

I already love your product, but if you implemented this I'd be so much more grateful. I'm even willing to do it myself if you would let me make a pull request.

Toon Alfrink shared this idea

One Response

  1. Hi Toon,

    Thanks for sharing with us this feature.

    We’re happy to know you managed to create a plan that works similarly with this feature.

    We will have this added to our list of suggested requests for future development and will keep you informed as soon as our devs have started taking this request into consideration.

    Best Regards,

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