For some reason I can’t figure out how to send a DM on this forum… might be due to my account being new? DM me your email and I’ll follow up (or teach me how to DM 
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DM me your email address and I’ll follow up!
Sure, if you’d like to beemind your FM session count that’s exactly what I’m working on. DM me your email and I’ll follow up!
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Hi David, yes, it was the newness of your forum account. I’ve bumped your trust level so you should be able to send DMs now, by clicking on the person’s username and then on ‘message’.
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Hmmm. Now that Focusmate have introduced 25 min sessions as well as the 50 minutes they previously had, that means that my Focusmate-tracking graph got complicated: if I do a 25 minute session, is that still a 1, or is it 0.5? Or nothing at all?
Argument for 1: the goal is not about the AMOUNT of focused time, but about using Focusmate to get tasks done. The best length of time for some tasks is 25 minutes, so even a 25 minute session = 1. The necessary focus was had.
Argument for 0.5: A 25-minute session is half the amount of focused time.
Argument for 0: When I set up the goal, only 50-minute sessions were possible. Counting 25-minute sessions toward that goal would be counter to my original intent.
It boils down to whether I made the goal intended for “a Focusmate session” to be the unit, no matter how long that session is, or whether I intended it to be a proxy for “50 minutes of focused time”. The unit is “Focusmate sessions”, not “50-minute sessions”, and I would not consider the goal complete if I did 50 minutes of focused work without Focusmate, so I’m leaning toward a 25-minute session still being a 1.
What do you think? Gut feelings?
Do the new 25-min sessions on Focusmate count as 0, 0.5 or 1 for my Beeminder goal where the units are “Focusmate sessions”?
- 0
- 0.5
- 1
0 voters
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My feeling is that 0.5 is what’s most robust and future-proof. In fact, I’d suggest using the nifty rescaling feature to convert your existing goal to hours and then enter 0:50 when you do a 50-minute session and 0:25 when you do a 25 minute session.
The thing you’d enter for the rescaling (at the bottom of the Data tab for those who don’t know) would be “50/60”.
I can definitely see the argument for minding just number of sessions though.
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On the other hand, as a Focusmate user, I never once even considered counting a 25 minute session differently than a 50 minute session for my beeminder goal. For me, it’s the “being forced to sit in once place and make an explicit intention about working” that matters (and is useful), rather than the time length.
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I just did my first 25 minute session, and counted it as a full session. The overall time may be shorter, but the burden/friction of scheduling and showing up is the same.
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Just to round things out with an idiotic idea: The metric could be “hours of focusmate time” but you get a 10 minute time bonus for scheduling and showing up to a session. So a 50-minute session actually counts as +1 (a full 60 minutes) and a 25-minute session counts as +0:35 = 0.58333.
I guess that ends up so similar to the “0.5” option that it’s silly to have on the table. But conceivably if there were a more principled way of choosing a time bonus for scheduling and showing up, it could make sense.
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I may be way off here, but for me suffering from executive dysfunction most of the time a 25-minute session would be a point. Doing a 50-minute session would be two points.
I don’t know why but “only getting half” feels oddly punishing.
Then again I also do weird 10-minute pomodoros, watched an ADHD video that suggests 10-work 3-short break 10-long break config instead of the usual 25-5-30. Works like a charm for me. So I’m definitely not the measure for all things here.
I do have a “focus” goal though that just counts every session (not focusmate, made that before) where I sit down to focus. So, yeah, I guess it all makes sense in a way.
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Having done a few short sessions now, I’m going to make 50 minutes my default, except where my schedule demands shorter space, e.g. because I’ve got a meeting in 40 minutes.
The whole hello-how’s-it-going-what’re-you-working-on and how’d-it-go-thanks-very-much cycle feels rushed and lower quality on my 25 minutes sessions, and takes up far too much of the 5 minutes between back to back sessions
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Yeah, agreed – the 25 minutes is a great option for all those times I have a less-than-hour gap between meetings, but otherwise 50 minutes is better.
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Just adding my Focusmate link directly here, too. Beeminder people are usually good people 
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For this informal group, here’s my Focusmate link too (updated).
And my Focusmate profile
Speaking of groups, I sometimes see that my focus partner is a member of several groups, some of which sound like they’re probably public. Does anyone know how to find/join Focusmate groups?
Edited to fix the link — as Alex pointed out you need to click ‘invite’ on your profile to find the real link.
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On groups, this page explains more.
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Also, I think you need a different link for people to sign up to do sessions with you. It’s a bit confusing how it’s laid out on the site, but you need to click the ‘invite’ button to get the real link.
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Thanks! I’d searched for such a page and not found it. Suspected it might be on their Facebook forums.
Also, I’ve updated my link above.
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I am now an avid user of Focusmate (I blame the blog post for that).
Feel free to book a session with me!
I’m on UTC+1/UTC+2.
This tends to pair well with UK, US east coast and everything in between.
Currently I don’t much reserve slots in advance so most of the time that link won’t show much, I’m afraid. I do hope this will change and hopefully having this link out in the open will help with that.
I won’t be around much next week, or will be booking short-notice sessions if I am… but after that, I might just book with you! 
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What’s everybody’s experience with partners who do dynamic stuff, like Yoga or cleaning their apartment?
I have personally found it harder to focus and hidden the video to not get distracted which is a small negative, because I usually enjoy glancing at my partners to get a focus boost.
At the same time, I am debating creating a default morning Focusmate session to do my morning workout and Yoga but I feel like I will annoy people which is why I haven’t done it yet.
By the way, thanks to phi for motivating me to start again, and thanks to dreev for changing the goal creation so that it becomes hard to create weekly goals forcing me to set a daily rate of one.
Also, re using Focusmate with colleagues around: I have found that I am not comfortable muting myself, as I enjoy talking to people more instead of using the chat. So, I have kind of embraced that my colleagues here me talk to random people explaining what I do next. I still don’t feel completely comfortable doing that, but it is okay. I have calls with customers too, so me talking is not a problem in itself.