How to Protect a Focus Plan from Yourself

FocusMe is a powerful website/app blocker, but its effectiveness ultimately depends on you. No matter how intricate and complex you create your Focus plan, it still won’t work if, in the end, you decide to just stop it from running. A chain is only as good as its weakest link, after all.

This guide will show you the three options for protecting your plans:

  • Using a random password as a deterrent
  • Using a custom password
  • Using Forced mode.

Creating/Editing a Focus Plan

The first thing you do is either create a new plan or edit an existing one. To create a new plan, hit the “add plan” button on the upper right. To edit an existing plan, you can either right-click on the plan and select “Edit Plan” or hit the respective ellipsis on the right.

Set up the plan according to your needs, see the other guides like this one on how to block a site.

Setting up Protection

The Protection page (6/6) is where you setup a password to protect your Focus plan. The password options are as follows:

  • None – There is no password required to stop the Focus plan
  • Random Characters – A system generated password will be asked whenever it is required.
  • Custom Password – Lets you set your own password.
  • Forced – When this is selected, there will be no way to stop the plan. Please use caution when implementing this.

Random Password as a Deterrent

You can also select “Random Characters” and set the length as long as you need. It is recommended to set the password long enough for you to be discouraged in typing it.

Tip: You can set the random password length to up to 2000 characters long. The Longer the password, the more effective it is to being a deterrent.

When you want to stop a plan that has a random password as its protection, you’ll see a window like this:

Using a Custom Password

On the Protection page, Set “Pausing” and “Add to Allowlist” to “Disabled” and the rest to “Password”, enter your custom password on the provided fields, then click on the check mark when you’re done.

Tip: You could have a friend enter in a password that you do not know. Optionally, you could use an online password generator and then send the password to a friend for safe-keeping. Just make sure you delete the message to them afterwards. This method lets you have a means to stop the Focus plan only in case of emergency. Otherwise, let your password keeper know that he/she should keep it from you to make the most out of FocusMe.

Once the passwords are set, hit “Done” to save the Focus plan.

If you want to stop the plan protected with a custom password, you will see a window like below:

Using Forced Mode

Warning: Selecting “Forced” means the plan cannot be stopped manually. Please use caution when choosing this option.

When choosing Forced, you will be warned by FocusMe first before you proceed. Click “OK” to set it. Clicking on “Help” will direct you to this guide.

Once set, it would look like this:

You can use any of these methods to protect your Focus plans. Which one you choose is entirely up to you.

 

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