How Fokuno plans

Fokuno plans by fixed rules. Here they are without the jargon: how Fokuno knows when you have time, where a block goes, and what happens when you change something yourself.

Last updated 22 October 2026, applies to Fokuno 0.56.

In short

Every five minutes, Fokuno looks at your calendar: what's already there, what's done, what's still missing? From that it works out a plan for the next six weeks and changes only what differs from it in your calendar. Habits come first, then the tasks that are most urgent. Each task gets the earliest day with a good hour, and on that day the best one. Whatever you move or delete yourself stays that way.

What Fokuno needs to know from you

Fokuno plans only with what you tell it. During setup that's four things, all of which you can change later.

• When you work. One time window per weekday. The default fits school: Monday to Friday 4:30 to 9:30 pm, weekends 9 am to 6 pm. Fokuno only places blocks inside these windows. Days without a window and rest days stay empty.
• How much per day. At most three hours of focused work per day, tasks and habits combined. Nothing more is scheduled, even if there's room.
• Your tasks. What needs doing, roughly how long it takes, and by when. Optionally: not before when, how important, and whether it's studying for an exam.
• Which calendars take up time. For each Google calendar you decide whether its appointments count as busy. A birthday calendar shouldn't block anything; your class schedule should.

Fokuno leaves 15 minutes of breathing room around every appointment, so you don't go straight from the bus into the next block. And it never touches the next hour: whatever is about to start stays as it is.

Where a block goes

Not every hour is equally good for thinking. Fokuno rates each hour of the day with a daily curve: best early in the morning and through the late morning, a dip after lunch, a smaller high in the late afternoon, weak late at night. From the middle of the scale up, an hour counts as good.

Then Fokuno goes through the days in order, starting today. The first day that has any good hour at all wins. On that day it takes the best free hour. That way work lands early in the week, but not at 9 pm just because that's where the first gap happens to be.

The curve adapts to you. Once you've done 20 focus blocks, Fokuno knows at which hours you actually start and at which you tend to skip. That makes up a good third of the rating. If you think best in the evening, your blocks gradually move to the evening.

Blocks last 30 to 90 minutes unless you set something else. If the morning only has room for 75 instead of 90 minutes, Fokuno still plans there and puts the rest on another day. The good hour matters more than the full length. Tiny leftovers don't happen: if less than the minimum length would remain after a block, Fokuno splits differently, say 60 and 30 minutes instead of 75 and 15.

Who gets a slot first

Whoever comes first gets the good hours. That's why the order is a rule in itself.

1. Habits. They're short and tied to days or times of day. If they came after the tasks, the three hours would already be used up and reading would drop out every week.
2. Tasks, by urgency. Urgency here means: how much time is still missing, relative to the time left until the deadline? A task with 3 hours left and a deadline in 2 days is more urgent than one with 5 hours left and a deadline in 3 weeks. On a tie, importance decides, then the age of the task.

Each task normally gets one block per day. Only when the deadline gets close does Fokuno add a second block on the same day, and only at the very end the weaker edge hours.

An example

It's Monday noon. You add: “Biology summary, 3 hours, by Thursday”. Your window is 4:30 to 9:30 pm, and on Monday you have practice until 5 pm. Fokuno works it out like this:

• Monday: after practice plus 15 minutes of breathing room, you're free from 5:15. 5:15 is a good hour, so the first block goes there, 90 minutes.
• Tuesday: the next block with the remaining 90 minutes, again at the best free time in the late afternoon.
• Wednesday and Thursday stay free for this task. If a block falls through, there's still room there.

Studying for exams

If you mark a task as an exam, Fokuno plans differently. Studying is split into shorter sessions of 25 to 45 minutes and spread evenly over the days between today and the day before the exam. The last session is always on the day before.

The reason: spaced practice is one of the few study techniques with well-documented benefits. A large review of ten techniques rates only two as highly useful, spaced practice and practice testing (Dunlosky et al., 2013). A single block the night before that tries to cover everything isn't one of them.

The study days depend only on the start, the exam day and the number of sessions. So they don't wander around every day. If you miss a study day, Fokuno finds another slot for that session before the exam.

Habits

Habits come in two kinds.

• Fixed: at exactly the time, on the days you name. If that time is taken, the habit is skipped that day. Fokuno doesn't move it, because you chose the time on purpose.
• Flexible: for example 30 minutes three times a week. Fokuno spreads the sessions evenly over the week; seven days and three sessions become Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The first session looks for the best hour, the others come at the same time of day whenever possible.

You can give a preferred time (morning, midday, evening or an exact range) and preferred days. What you've already done this week counts. And whatever no longer fits into a week lapses. No backlog builds up to clog the next week.

Monthly and yearly habits work too, such as “sort out finances at the end of the month”. If you miss the day, Fokuno catches up within the six days after.

You have the last word

A plan that rebuilds itself behind your back quickly loses your trust. So: whatever you do yourself, the planner leaves alone.

A calm calendar

Every change in your calendar is an intrusion into your day. So Fokuno changes as little as possible. A block that's already in the right place isn't touched, even if a new plan would shift it by a quarter of an hour. If a block in the next seven days moves to another day or by 30 minutes or more, Fokuno shows you until you've seen it.

The planner never rolls dice. The same tasks, appointments and settings always produce the same plan. That makes it predictable, and it makes it testable: every version of Fokuno has to pass the same test cases.

When it gets tight

If a task no longer fits before its deadline, Fokuno tells you, with the number of minutes missing. It also works out which later deadline would make everything fit. Then you decide: move the deadline, shorten the duration or free up more time one evening.

The defaults at a glance

You set working hours, the daily limit and block lengths in Fokuno itself.

Try it on your week

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