Step 3 How strict — pick a preset, or Customize
Rung 1: Gentle Guidance
New plans start here. Stopping, whitelisting or skipping a break costs five random characters; pausing is free. Use it when: you’re still checking that a plan’s targets and schedule are right, or you just need a moment’s reflection between the impulse and the click. What it feels like: a decision, not a reflex. You can always get out, but not by accident.Rung 2: Firm but Flexible
Stopping takes a two-minute wait, then ten random characters. Pausing costs six characters and you get three pauses a day of 15 minutes each. Whitelisting costs twelve characters and skipping a break costs four. Use it when: Gentle Guidance has stopped working — you’ve noticed yourself typing the five characters without a second thought. What it feels like: the wait does the work. The impulse to stop has to outlive two minutes of the plan still blocking; most impulses don’t. The rationed pauses are your relief valve, so you don’t feel trapped.Rung 3: Lock it Down
Stopping takes a ten-minute wait, then 25 random characters typed perfectly — one typo and you start again. No pauses, no skipping breaks, no whitelist additions. Use it when: you know exactly what the plan should do and you want stopping to stay possible but never easy. What it feels like: you can still get out in a genuine emergency, but it costs ten minutes of waiting plus a careful minute of typing. That’s enough to make “just five minutes on Reddit” not worth the effort.Rung 4: Enforced (via Customize)
Click Customize and set Protection when active to Enforced. The plan cannot be stopped until its schedule ends — no wait, no challenge, no exit. Set Pause and Skip break to Disallowed and Add to whitelist to Disallowed to close the remaining doors. FocusMe warns you before it accepts this. On a Quick Timer: Stopping the plan will not be possible until the timer runs out. On a 24/7 weekly schedule with no end date: you will never be able to stop this plan. Use it when: you have tested the plan on Lock it Down for at least a few days and nothing needed changing. Before you commit:- Use a Weekly Schedule with gaps for the hours you genuinely need unrestricted access, or tick Set end date.
- Set Protection when on standby and Edit protection too — otherwise you can stop the plan outside its hours, edit it to remove protection, and restart it.
- Remember that a running plan can only ever be edited to be stricter.
Add a Master Password
Protection stops you stopping a plan, but a Master Password stops you opening FocusMe at all. In Settings > General, set Master Password to Random Chars (with a length and optional Perfect Entry) or to a Password you don’t keep to hand — choosing Password reveals Password and Repeat password fields in the same row. Give it to someone you trust, or generate it in a password manager and don’t memorise it. FocusMe then asks for it before showing the main screen, and starts minimised.Add an Accountability Partner
Tick Partner Override on a challenge to let a trusted person unlock it for you. Add them in Settings > Accountability with their Partner email, then use Lock Accountability Partners so you can’t quietly add a more lenient partner later. When you ask for an Assisted Stop, the dialog’s main button sends them your reason; they approve by email or give you a code. Learn more about accountability partners →Add a Self-Imposed Penalty
If waiting and typing isn’t enough, put money on it. A Self-Imposed Penalty charges you when you use an assisted stop — a cost you’ll only accept in a real emergency.Tips
- Escalate, don’t jump. Most people never need Enforced. A preset that lets you out at a price you rarely want to pay is the sweet spot.
- Protect standby and editing once you’re past Gentle Guidance, or the protection only holds while the schedule is active.
- Watch the tier in the Plans list. Each row shows its tier — Gentle Guidance, Firm but Flexible, Lock it Down or Custom — with a one-line summary, so you can see at a glance which plans are still on training wheels.