Worked Examples: Focus Mode in the Real World
Let’s see how these principles apply to two very different professional scenarios. A system is only effective if it’s flexible enough to adapt to your unique constraints and responsibilities.
Scenario 1: The Manager with a Meeting-Heavy Schedule
Meet Sarah, a department manager. Her calendar is a rainbow of back-to-back meetings. Her biggest challenge isn’t long blocks of deep work; it’s the 30-60 minute gaps between meetings. These gaps are often consumed by a flood of emails and instant messages, leaving her feeling reactive and unproductive. She’s busy, but not moving her own priorities forward.
Sarah’s solution is to create a “Meeting Prep/Debrief” Focus Mode. This mode is not for deep work, but for focused transition. Here’s her setup:
Allowed People: Her direct assistant only, for urgent logistical issues.
Allowed Apps: Her calendar app, her note-taking app (for meeting notes), and her team’s project management app.
Automation: She uses a Shortcut automation to trigger this Focus Mode for 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after every single calendar event.
The Result: Before a meeting, instead of reactively checking email, her phone automatically shields her. She uses the 15 minutes to review the agenda and her notes, arriving at the meeting prepared and present. After the meeting, the Focus Mode kicks in again. She uses this time to summarize her key takeaways, delegate action items in the project management app, and close the mental loop before the next meeting begins. She has turned fragmented time into highly productive, focused transitions. Her use of this specific phone setting for focus has reclaimed hours of effective work time each week.
Scenario 2: The Solo Maker with an Open Schedule
Now consider David, a freelance writer. His challenge is the opposite of Sarah’s. He has a wide-open schedule, which can easily lead to procrastination and a lack of structure. The “tyranny of the blank page” is matched by the tyranny of the blank calendar.
David’s solution is to build a rigid structure for his mornings using Focus Mode and timeboxing. His goal is to protect his peak creative energy from the demands of the outside world.
Focus Mode: “Writing Sprint” mode.
Allowed People: None. He has informed his family to call him on his partner’s phone in a true emergency.
Allowed Apps: His writing app and a dictionary/thesaurus app. Nothing else.
Home Screen: A custom page showing only those two apps and a widget for his timer.
Automation & Ritual: Every weekday morning at 8:30 AM, his “Writing Sprint” mode activates automatically and stays on for three hours. He doesn’t even have to think about it. He combines this with a timeboxing technique called the Pomodoro Technique. He works in 25-minute sprints with 5-minute breaks, using a physical timer on his desk. During the 25-minute work block, his focus is absolute. During the 5-minute break, he can stand up and stretch, but he does not check his phone for other things, as the Focus Mode is still active. The phone hack is the barrier that protects his ritual.
The Result: David has created a powerful, non-negotiable container for his most important work. By 11:30 AM, he has already accomplished his most valuable task of the day. He can then spend his afternoons on shallower work like emails, invoicing, and research, knowing his creative output is secure. His use of focus mode for productivity has transformed his output and reduced his work-related anxiety.
