I have severe ADHD and, the older I get, it seems to be increasingly out of control. In recent years it has made me more and more melancholic. But exactly a year ago, I found Beeminder, and it has—without exaggeration!—completely changed my life. So many of those things I want to do, but don’t technically need to do (and therefore never do them), now become need-to-dos, and now I finally do them. Beeminder has pushed me much closer to the person I want to be.
After I found Beeminder, having never found anything as profoundly impactful in my life, I was sure I would never find anything like it again. A once-in-a-lifetime discovery.
But then, a few months ago, I found Focusmate. And, once again, my life has been upended for the better. I never would’ve imagined that body doubling could be so profound for my productivity and focus. As of right now, I’m 254 sessions in. And every day I’m so thankful that Focusmate exists. And I’m thankful for everyone else on the site who shows up and tries their best with me.
So, if you like Beeminder, and you haven’t tried Focusmate, I can’t encourage you enough to give it a shot. Focusmate and Beeminder have together changed my life profoundly.
That’s fantastic! Have you considered reaching out to them with your testimonial? That could be super helpful for folks to see who are considering giving FocusMate a try.
I appreciate this message because I’ve been hesitant to try focus mate due to being fairly introverted.
I should definitely give it a shot though. I think the challenge for me is knowing what time to schedule it for as I get stressed when I have too many things in my schedule
I don’t know if this will help anyone, but feel free to DM me if you want to book your first session(s) with me. Maybe it makes it a little easier to know that the other person is a fellow Beeminder user. Or, it might be a horrible idea that makes it much more stressful, in which case, just ignore me. Just throwing it out there. I am generally a super nice and chill person (except when rperce or adamwolf push my buttons, lol), and my funny German accent makes me even less intimidating.
Edit, to contribute to OPs point:
Focusmate is great for added accountability and more structure throughout the day. I also like that their website constantly improves and the scheduling algorithm gets better and better. Amazing Marvin and Focusmate are probably my two favorite apps in terms of how they constantly listen to user feedback to improve their product.
Here’s a referral link for a free month of FocusMate Plus for anyone who’s interested. This gets you the ability to create more than 3 sessions per week.
Tried it for the first time yesterday. It has been a game changer for me. I have used 4 times including right now. I don’t know if I have ADHD but I do know my focus sucks. Like its not that I cant focus but cant ever seem to control what my mind focuses on. Some days my brain hyper focuses on stupid stuff that does not matter. Than other days it wont focus anything at all. Focusmate seems to help a lot knowing I will be asked how I did at the end.
Time will tell if it is a long term soultion but I am hopeful.
As @hnsn said I just started it and have done 5 sessions total and all were scheduled 5-10 minutes before. So I would not worry about the schedule part of it.
I am too but honestly it is not that bad. You talk a little at the beginning and a little at the end. They also have a quiet mode where you just give your goal in chat without having to talk. I was also nervous about trying it but I am glad I did. Today was the most productive day I have had in a really long time.