Distractions: pause and lock

Fokuno doesn’t forbid anything, it asks first. One breath of distance is often enough that you don’t need the site at all.

The breathing pause

If you open a distracting site or app during a focus block, Fokuno steps in briefly: take one breath. Then you decide for yourself:

• Back to work. You carry on where you were.
• Anyway, 5 minutes. You take the break on purpose, not by accident.
• Belongs to the work. The site belongs to your task, for example a video for your presentation.

The pause is not a ban. It turns a reflex into a decision. That this works is shown by a six-week field experiment with 280 people: with a pause before opening a distracting app, participants gave up 36 % of attempts and opened it 37 % less often overall (Grüning, Riedel & Lorenz-Spreen, PNAS 2023).

Stricter: the lock

If you prefer it stricter, switch from the pause to locking. Then the site stays closed until the block is over.

A break from distractions without a block

You can switch on the same pause without a block too, for example for a whole evening. With an AI assistant you can also do this in conversation: “Take a break from distractions from 8 pm today.” More on that under AI connection.

How Fokuno recognises distractions

During a block or a break, the Windows app checks which program is in front and reads its name and window title. With the browser extension it sees the address of the page in the active tab instead. That is how Fokuno recognises sites like YouTube.

• This happens only on your device and only while a block or a break is running.
• Something is stored only when the pause steps in: the name of the distraction and your choice.
• Recognition needs the Windows app, because only it sees which program is in front.

All details are in the privacy policy.

Next

What else makes a block is covered in Focus block and ritual. Where the Windows app runs and what the other devices can do is shown in Windows, web and phone.