Focus time is a common way that people try to block out time for heads-down work.
At Reclaim, we're big believers in making your calendar as intentional as possible, so that you have a contextual and prioritized plan for your day. But for folks who prefer to implement generic focus time blocks to defend time for your independent work, you can accomplish this using Habits.
Create Focus Time with Habits
First, head on over to the Habits page in Reclaim. You can either create a Focus Time Habit from scratch by clicking the + New Habit button, or use the customizable Focus Time template to get started:
Fill out or adjust your Habit scheduling rules to tell Reclaim exactly how you want your Focus Time to schedule on your calendar by changing the priority, duration, hours, duration, frequency, and more to fine-tune to your preferences.
You can learn more about how Habits work and creating them here.
Note: Reclaim blocks only one event for a Habit per day, so if you want to have multiple Focus Time blocks in the day (for example, a morning Focus Time block and an afternoon one) you'll want to create two different Habits for each.
Hit save to start scheduling Focus Time on the calendar around your preferences, so you have time defended to get work done.
Defend Focus Time on the calendar
If you want to make sure that your Focus Time is prioritized, you can set more aggressive Time Defense Settings so Reclaim protects it from being overbooked.
If you really don't want to be interrupted during your Focus Time block, you can also choose to enable Auto-Decline Interruptions under 'Advanced Settings' for the Habit.
This will automatically decline any inbound meeting invites during that Focus Time block and send an email to the meeting inviter with a default message, which you can choose to customize.
You can also turn any event on your calendar into a Focus Time block by simply adding #reclaim_free to the title or description in Google Calendar. This will treat the event as unavailable time to others who book time with you, but will still allow Reclaim to block time for Tasks and Habits (learn more about using smart hashtags here).