Goals that read from real usage: targets and limits in FocusLens

Most goal-setting for focus happens in your head. You decide this week will be different, you aim for four solid hours a day, and by Wednesday you have no idea whether you managed it on Monday. The goal was real; the measurement was not.

FocusLens already knows how long you spent in each category, because that is what it records all day. Goals simply point that data at a number you care about.

Targets and limits

A goal in FocusLens is one of two kinds, set against a category:

• A daily target: an amount you want to reach. Four hours of deep work, say.
• A daily limit: an amount you want to stay under. An hour in distracting apps, ninety minutes in communication.

Targets are for the work you want more of. Limits are for the time you want less of. Most people end up with one of each, which turns out to be a good balance: one goal pulling you towards something, one fencing something off.

Progress from the hours you logged

The important design decision is where the progress bar gets its number. It reads from the hours FocusLens has actually recorded in that category today, live, as the day goes on. You do not log anything or tick anything off. A goal card shows the target and your live progress towards it, and it moves while you work.

That is the difference between a goal and a wish. The number cannot drift, cannot be rounded up at the end of a long day, and cannot rot. A goal you set two months ago is measured as honestly today as on the day you set it.

Goals depend on your categories

Because goals are set against categories, they are only as accurate as the categories are. A deep work target fills from whatever FocusLens counts as productive. If your main writing tool is filed as a utility, your target will look impossible and the problem is not your discipline.

Fix the filing first. The post on categories covers how overrides work; the short version is that an override in Settings recalculates every past day, goals included.

Managing goals

Goals are easy to change, which matters more than it sounds. A goal that no longer fits a season of your work is worse than no goal, because it trains you to ignore the screen. Each goal can be:

• Paused, when you are on holiday, ill, or doing a week of work that does not fit the target.
• Deleted, when it no longer reflects what you want.
• Set to notify you when it is met.

Notifications are composed and scheduled on your Mac. If you turn them on, macOS asks for permission once; refuse it and goals still work, you just do not get the alert.

The summary strip

Above the goal cards, the Goals screen opens with a summary strip: goals hit, deep work, distracted time and focus score. It is the four numbers you would want if you only had a second to look, and it connects goals to the rest of the app. A day where you hit your deep work target but your focus score is low usually means the hours were there but fragmented, which is a different problem from not having the hours at all.

Setting a goal you will keep

Some suggestions from using it ourselves:

Measure before you set. Use FocusLens for a week without goals. Your Reports and Analytics will show what a normal day looks like, and a target set ten percent above your real average is one you will hit and build on. A target set at the number you wish were true is one you will pause by Thursday.

Start with one target and one limit. More than that and the Goals screen becomes a list of small failures.

Make limits about the biggest leak. The App Switcher view names the apps that break your focus most often. If one category dominates that list, that is your limit.

Revisit after a month. If you hit a target every day, raise it or retire it. A goal you always meet has stopped telling you anything.

What is coming

Per-app goals, so you can set a limit on one particular app rather than its whole category, are on the list of planned features after the notarized release, along with a longer history in the heatmap and an iPhone companion that reads the same numbers.

FocusLens is free, keeps all of this on your Mac and makes no network requests at all. It is available as a preview by email while the release build is notarized.