Windows 11 brought several exciting changes. Surprisingly, many of these changes are aimed at increasing our productivity levels, whether it's the centrally aligned taskbar or convenient gestures. Another new productivity-focused change is tune-up sessions. As the name suggests, this simple feature is designed to boost your productivity by helping you focus on the task at hand.
It is easy to set up and the best part is that you can also listen to music from Spotify while you are doing the task at hand. And yes, you can also set the tasks. Sounds interesting, right?
In this article, we will see how to activate and use Focus Session to boost your productivity.
Let's go, okay?
What is Windows 11 Focus Sessions
As mentioned earlier, Focus Session is designed to help you focus more on the job at hand. Its function is similar to the Time-Block mechanism, where you block a certain time in your day for a particular task.
While previously Windows users had to rely on third-party apps or Chrome extensions, this time users like us can access it directly from the Clock app itself.
Naturally, you will need to log in to access all features. However, this is not mandatory. For now, Focus Sessions integrates Microsoft To-Do and Spotify.
You can see your daily progress and streaks with tune-up sessions. Sequences are the number of times you have successfully completed a session. At the same time, you can also set yourself a daily goal. For now, Microsoft has set a target of 1 hour.
Focus sessions can be found under the Clock app. Just open the start menu and search for Clock.
How to start a task
If this is your first time accessing Focus Sessions, you may need to sign in for the app to pull your tasks from Microsoft To-Do.
Once done, all you have to do is press the Start Focus Session button and start the timer. Tune-up sessions offer the option of adding a break in between. By default, the pause is five minutes, and you can change it in the settings (more on that later).
Step 1 : To start the task, hover over the task and click the Select button for the session.
Step 2 : Change the timer as needed and start the session. That's it.
Once the timer is over (or you have manually stopped it), the time relative to that particular task will be displayed. Well, that's a huge plus. This way, it will help you gauge how long it takes you to complete (or partially complete) a job so that you can more easily calculate the time required for future sessions.
Again, note that linking Microsoft To-Do is not required. If you just want to time yourself while you work on a task, you can add a new independent task. To do this, click on the three-dot button as shown in the screenshot below and add the details.
Manage notifications and remove distractions
But no clock or timer can help you be productive if you're continually distracted by a deluge of notifications.
To dim notifications, click Settings in the left panel and select Change your notification settings.
This action will open the Windows notification and tune-up assistant.
While the notification shows a larger image, you can actually customize all of your system's notification settings using Focus Assist. You can either set automatic rules based on time. Or, you can select the names of allowed apps.
Again, it's important to note that the tune-up assistant does not automatically trigger when you start a tune-up session. It just opens the door to better notification management.
The idea is to tailor it accordingly so that you have minimal distractions while working.
Customize chat session settings
Although there aren't many of them, you can customize some of the tune-up session settings to your liking.
For example, you can set the default focus period and break period through settings.
Apart from that, there are other minor changes like changing session tones.
If you prefer to listen to music from their smartphones, here is where you can deselect the Spotify thumbnail.
Keep ticking
At the moment, Focus sessions offer a good way to block time natively. It allows you to add standalone tasks and allows you to pull tasks directly from Microsoft To-Do. Well, the Spotify integration also looks interesting.
However, to focus on the task at hand, you will need to remove all unnecessary distractions. And at the same time configure both Focus Assist and Focus Sessions. Hopefully Microsoft will add a native way to change notifications soon.
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