Focusmate - Virtual coworking for getting anything done

It took my partner 3 reminders to get me onto FocusMate and I’m so glad he persisted. I’m actually obsessed. I feel like I could be in advertising for FM. 🙂 My ADHD brain is so dependent on this. I love meeting random people from all over. The new time additions are awesome. I like the option to wait if someone is running a little late. Perhaps an indicator if someone is willing to have a short chat post-session. My random little chats have been so cool. My faves were seeing a likeminded person try to make a skirt and another cleaning mushrooms they’d just collected from the forest. Soooo cool. Are there options for displaying languages? Might be cool to be able to connect with others who are speaking and learning languages. I think I’ve mentioned in an email to you that an indicator of who’s happy to introduce newbies might be good. Thanks for everything! Your website is life changing for some of us ND folk. I’m wondering what the rules are for underage users. I’d love for my students to use this or something similar, without any major risks.

I absolutely love FocusMate. It has made my remote work way more productive and I DO NOT FEEL ALONE! I really had a hard time staying committed to my work due to the isolation of working by yourself. I am so thankful for this software! I absolutely love the 50 min sessions. I found that I get overwhelmed with the 75 min sessions. I would love if there was a pool for late people lol. Sometimes I'm rushing to my desk to book a last minute session (like right at 15 minutes past the hour and the have to wait 15 minutes to book another session. Possibly there could be a feature to connect people who book last minute (I think Taylor mentioned this in his post) where we could work a partial session if we booked within 2 minutes after? (Ie: by 8:17, 8:32, 8:47, etc.) They would still be 25, 50, or 75 min sessions, but we would just end up working slightly less because we booked last minute. I find that when I have those 15 minutes to wait between sessions I waste a TON of time... Again, thank you for this software!

One of the most life-changing tools I've ever used! I wish I'd found it sooner! Incredible for motivation, with beautiful unexpected connections with people worldwide who are working on different things (and who are keen to hear about what I'm doing, too). I've only been using it a few months and already coworked with data scientists, software engineers, someone who took me along for their morning walk as the sun rose in Berlin (sharing the view on camera on their phone), someone playing cello, people doing food preparation, and others using it to get through life admin of paying bills and preparing notes for a medical appointment - with their cute cat sitting with us. It's simple and easy to use. I love that I can match with a random stranger or use the "favourites" functionality to schedule sessions with people I already know. I'm very grateful to the founders and all the staff who have been and continue to be involved with developing and maintaining this. You're changing lives. Thank you.

Focusmate has been great. A few suggestions for future features from what I see people need: 1. A way to let people easily see what you are currently working on would be very helpful in helping people doing similar tasks find each other. Some tasks, it matters quite a bit to some people that they have some similarities, such as in the rise and fall group, or maybe in exercising, or working on a long-term thesis, etc. In any case, it's nice to put it down and therefore the person themselves has clarity on what they are working on next. 2. More than one focusmate partner at a time. Therefore if one didn't show up (happened to me this morning and I waited 20 minutes) another one may be there. Additionally, there are popular days my partners would like to get together with me and I am only one person. Some activities can work really well with more than one. 3. Speaking of videos, I bought a small laptop to be able to have a device I could use the share screen feature on in Focusmate as it doesn't exist on the phone or tablet. I think it would be great to have that feature although of course now that I have my laptop it's no longer a top feature to have for me but I'm sure others would love it. ;> 4. Focusmate didn't really work for me until I found the right partners and now it's an invaluable tool to help me with the habit of getting up earlier and to wind down at night along with the usual to get tasks done during the day done although I use if for that the least due to shyness and cancellations. I came very close to giving up on Focusmate because it felt strange to work with strangers and I would get rematched at the last minute or canceled after I had tken the time to read the person's profile to get familiar with them and was looking forward to working with them. I later found out the cancelling and rematching could have been because some favorite of theirs locked in the session at the last minute. But as a newbie that was very confusing and unhelpful to be canceled on last minute. But I digress. My main ask is to think of how someone can find partners that are the right fit for them. Body doubling is very useful but it can be super powerful if the partner is a great match and meeting them is done on a regular basis. If Focusmate can have some kind of feature integrated to the app that helps people find others with similar needs it would really be helpful. I finally after being very close to giving up on Focusmate decided to post something on a facebook group for exactly what I needed and that made all the difference. It would be nice if that partner search could be incorporated as an integral part of Focusmate. 5. Lastly, can there be a blur feature? Where the person can see you are there but barely? There are people who like to go off screen for privacy and I'm thinking maybe a blur feature instead would be helpful? I'm thinking in the cases where they are eating something and don't want nosh in someone's face. Or other situations ... Something your team can brainstorm? I am not sure how to deal with it (maybe show quarter screen? lol) but I know it's a need and something that would be helpful because some people would just go off camera and that's not super helpful to the partner. Thanks! I love the free 3 times a week that is great for people trying it out. Thank you for implementing this great application.

One question I have is about minimizing the ecological or carbon footprint of the service. There are a few different studies showing the carbon footprint of streaming video, and I worry that if more people stream video while they work on FocusMate, it will exacerbate the issue. What are you doing to address this aspect or reduce the amount of data required to run FocusMate? For example, would you ever consider doing a "low-fi" eco option? I find that I often make the video small on my computer so I can see my work... so we don't need a ton of detail in the video itself. Other than this concern, I'm a happy FocusMate customer and get a lot of value in pair-working with people!

I'm relatively new to Focusmate but it's honestly been transformative to my work and my productivity. I do have a few suggestions: 1. Allow users to make their pronouns visible publiclly in a way that is meaningful. I shouldn't have to open a partner's profile to see their info before a meeting starts. Some people get around this by adding their pronouns instead of their last name. This is exactly what I would like to see. 2. Allow matching/exclusion of partners based on what type of session they want to have (e.g. chat only, mic on/off, screen share). Again people get around this by adding this info to their name field but it's not ideal. 3. The ability to trigger a rematch for a scheduled session without having to cancel and rebook (often just matching with the same person again). I don't always want to snooze the person -- I've never met them. but maybe I'm just not in the mindset to have a session with a particular type of person or maybe they already indicate they only do chat and that's not what I want at that moment. Again. LOVE the service. I recommend it to everyone I talk to these days.

My suggestions on Focusmate: 1. Please don't use Product Hunt to give you feedback. Having to join Product Hunt, confirm email ..... ; you can do better than this as like someone else below I almost stopped this process 2. BRB Button 3. Checklist for this is what I am getting done this session - with a Done option for items in the list. I'm forever writing in the chat, "7 things to be done this session", 1 Done, 2 Done etc. 4. The ability to connect with specific people when they want to connect with you on the Focusmate Facebook page. I'm currently looking for an accountability partner and someone has written book a session with me but how do they do this without broadcasting their private booking link to everyone? 5. Continue to see me in the PnP window 6. Optional Encouragement Pop-Ups. Love the "New" Pop-Ups and the etiquette of dealing with Newbies. "Great to see you back with us", "Wow 1,000 sessions completed!", Your Focusmate has completed 1,000 sessions this session" .... Focusmate is making a difference in the world. Never stop improving! Enjoy!

I love Focusmate, ever since my (very late) ADHD diagnosis it has been a game changer. I would like to have a quick switch, like a drop-down menu, to choose every time whether I can talk or not during the session, without having to change my name. Is it at all feasible?

I would love the option to work with more than one person at a time-- it could stay small, but like maybe up to 5 people? and once it goes beyond that, to split the group up evenly (so if there were 6, make two groups of 3; if there were 16, four groups of 4). It would also be nice to work in groups based on the type of work you're doing. For example, I'd love to have the option to find others who are working out, or house cleaning, or taking care of personal admin stuff like bills and scheduling doc appointments. Even if you could just indicate between active v desk work, that would be great. It's less important to me when doing "desk work" to find other people doing exactly my same kinds of tasks (writing, answering emails, social media maintenance for my company, etc.), but it still could be nice to find other writers and scientists can find other scientists, etc. I know there's a setting to show people in certain groups in your calendar, but this in particular doesn't quite fit the need when you're doing a more active task like working out or cleaning.

I love focusmate! I would say my biggest frustration or area of improvement is that on a 25 minute session, sometimes the person is just under 2 minutes late and then there is sometimes too much chit chat. I understand that these can be seen as the features and not the bug since you get the human element at the end of the day. And yes I’m happy to see rematching 2.0 because sometimes i sign up for a session close to the start time and it just can’t match me with anyone. I imagine this might get fixed in 2.0. Keep it up!