Focus Time works by defending smart blocks of time on your calendar for productive, independent work. You set a goal for how much heads-down time you want, and Reclaim finds and defends it on your calendar, working around your meetings & routines.
You can leave Focus as generic blocks to stay agile around shifting meetings & priorities, or use Focus in tandem with Reclaim’s smart Habits (routines) to create a more concrete daily plan.
Focus Time has a companion agent, Defend Meeting Overload - which comes at the same problem from the opposite direction - capping how much time goes into meetings. They create the same kind of block and work well together.
Creating a Focus Time agent
Click Add at the top of your Agents list, or Create in the top navigation, to open the Agent library. Choose Focus from the left-hand navigation, then Focus Time.
Creating it puts you into Preview Mode first, so you can see where the blocks land before anything is applied.
Setting your Agent rules
Weekly goal: How many hours of Focus would you ideally like during your week?
Min & max daily goal: If you'd like to give guidance on how much focus you'd like allotted a day & thus spread it out across the week.
Minimum event duration sets how small the Focus blocks can be, 30 minutes by default. Raise the minimum it if you'd rather have fewer & longer blocks than several short ones.
Scheduling hours controls when this can happen, set to your Working Hours by default, but you can choose 'One-Off' hours and narrow the days and hours window.
When there are scheduling conflicts allows you to decide whether you want to auto-decline meetings that interrupt your Focus Time, and send a message to the organizer who invited you.
How does Focus work on the calendar?
Like all Reclaim smart events, Focus Time blocks help you defend the time you need while staying flexible. Focus blocks intelligently reschedule to the next best time – just like Habits and Smart meetings – adapting around higher-priority items and meetings.
Focus Time will automatically reschedule when interrupted by another event that you RSVP yes to.
When you move a Focus event on your calendar, it will automatically lock and stop moving, even if it's interrupted by another event.
When you delete a Focus event on your calendar, Reclaim won't try to schedule Focus into that time range and treat it as a "skip".
How Focus is prioritized relative to other Reclaim events
Focus Agents are prioritized a little differently than your other Reclaim agents. The Agents are pinned to "Low" priority thus allowing other agents like Habits & Smart Meeting to schedule. However the Focus events on the Calendar are a 'high' priority, meaning that only Critical Scheduling Links will show those slots as available times to meet.
Habits or Focus Time?
Both protect time, but for different things. If you can name the routine or activity, use a Habit. If you're protecting capacity, use Focus Time.
Focus Time is a total goal and one bucket for a budget of deep work. if you choose to assign tasks to focus time, the same task list will appear on every focus event across your week, like a backlog to burn down.
Habits are for a specific recurring activity or routine - lunch, status reporting, an end-of-day catch-up. There are more granular controls including setting Priority & specific days & times during which you want habits to schedule. Also, if you assign tasks to a habit, it can be a different saved search and a different task list per habit.
Troubleshooting
My Focus Time was moved or shortened.
Either an invitation was accepted on the focus time, or a higer priority Habit or Smart Meeting took precedence.
I'm getting very short Focus blocks.
Raise the Minimum event duration.
I'm not getting my full goal.
Check your your minimum duration. A long minimum leaves Reclaim few places to put Focus if your calendar is fragmented with meetings.
My Focus Time total in Insights looks wrong.
Check how your events are categorized — a mis-categorized recurring block can inflate the number or not get counted
Related articles
Defend Meeting Overload · Habits Overview · Agents Overview · How Reclaim uses Priorities to plan your
workweek · Insights