Windows 11 has brought some interesting changes. Surprisingly, quite a few of these changes are aimed at increasing our productivity levels—whether it’s the centered Taskbar or the handy gestures. Another new productivity-focused change is Focus Sessions. As the name suggests, this simple feature is designed to boost your productivity by helping you stay focused on the task at hand.
It’s easy to set up, and the best part is that you can also play music from Spotify while doing your current task. And yes, you can also define tasks. Sounds interesting doesn’t it?
In this post, we will see how to enable and use Focused Sessions to increase your productivity.
Let’s go, shall we?
What is Windows 11 Centralized Session?
As noted earlier, Focus Sessions are designed to help you stay more focused on your current work. Its functionality is similar to the Time Block mechanism, in that you block a certain time of day for a specific task.
While in the past Windows users had to rely on third-party apps or Chrome extensions, this time, users like us can access it directly from the Watch app itself.
Naturally, you will need to log in to access all features. However, it is not required. Currently, Focus Sessions integrates Microsoft To-Do and Spotify.
You can see your daily progress and achievements with Focus Sessions. Sequence is the number of times you successfully completed a session. At the same time, you can also set daily goals for yourself. Currently, Microsoft has set a goal of 1 hour.
The Focus Session can be found in the Watch app. Just open the start menu and search for Clock.
How to start a quest
If this is your first time accessing Focus Session, you may need to sign in for the app to get your tasks from Microsoft To-Do.
Once done, all you need to do is hit the Start Focus Session button and start the timer. The focus session comes with the option to add a break in between. By default, the break time is five minutes, and you can change the break in 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: Modify the Timer as per your requirement and start the session. That’s it.
After the timer completes (or you have manually stopped the timer), the time for that particular task will be displayed. And well, this is a huge plus. This way, it will help you gauge the amount of time you need to complete (or partially complete) a task so that you can calculate the time needed for future sessions more easily.
Again please note that linking Microsoft To-Do is optional. If you just want to time yourself while working on a task, you can add a new standalone Task. To do so, click on the three-dot button as shown in the screenshot below and add details.
Manage notifications and eliminate distractions
However, no clock or timer can keep you productive if you’re constantly distracted by a flood of notifications.
To reduce notifications, click Settings on the left panel and select Change your notification settings.
This will open Windows Notifications and Focus Assist.
While Notifications shows a bigger picture, you can actually adjust all of your system’s notification settings using Focus Assist. You can set automatic rules from time to time. Or, you can choose the names of the allowed apps.
Again, it’s important to note that Focus Assist will not start automatically when you start a Focus Session. It just opens the door to better notification management.
The idea is to tailor it so you have the least distractions while working.
Customize centralized session settings
While there aren’t many, you can tweak some of the Focus Sessions settings to your choice.
For example, you can define Default Focus Interval and Rest Interval through Settings.
In addition, there are other minor changes such as changing the transcription.
If you like listening to music from their smartphone, this is where you can uncheck the Spotify box.
Keep the clock ticking
Currently, Centralized Sessions provide a good way to native Time Blocks. It allows you to add standalone tasks and allows you to get tasks directly from Microsoft To-Do. And well, Spotify integration also looks interesting.
However, in order to focus on the task at hand, you will need to remove all unnecessary distractions. Also, configure both Focus Assist and Focus Sessions. Hopefully Microsoft will add a native way to change notifications soon.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
