What is Focus Work? Understanding the Focus Work Goal

Your Focus Work goal is the daily target for time spent on high-impact, deeply focused work. It appears in the Assistant as your featured goal so you can monitor your progress throughout the day.

The goal is set automatically by default, but you can change it at any time in your Account Settings.

What counts as Focus Work

Focus Work is time spent on activities you've classified as Focus Work on your Activities page. These are your highest-impact, most mentally demanding tasks. The kind of work that requires long, uninterrupted periods to do well. Coding, writing, designing, deep analysis: whatever your version of focused, valuable work is.

Because Focus Work is defined by your activity classifications, getting your Activities page set up correctly matters. If your most important apps aren't in the Focus Work column, your goal progress won't reflect reality. See Categories, Productivity Levels, and Managing Your Activities for how to adjust them.

How the goal appears in the Assistant

When you open the Assistant, you will see your featured goal.

The goal shown here is your starred goal. By default, this is the Daily Focus Goal set in your Work Schedule. If you star a different goal from the Goals & Alerts page, that one takes over as the featured goal in the Assistant.

Focus Work that happens outside your scheduled work hours is still tracked and shown in reports, but it only counts toward the Focus Work Goal if you click Back to Work in the Assistant.

How the default goal is calculated

By default the Focus Work Goal is set to automatic, which means RescueTime calculates it based on your work profile: your role, organization size, and target work week in your settings. If you update those settings, the automatic goal adjusts to match.

You can override this at any time with a fixed number or link it to an existing productivity goal.

Changing your Focus Work goal

Go to Account Settings → Work Schedule and click the edit icon next to Daily Focus Goal.

The modal gives you three options:

Automatic

RescueTime calculates your goal based on your work profile and target work week. The goal adjusts automatically if you update those settings.

Fixed hours (1–6)

Sets a specific daily target regardless of your work profile. Choose from 1 to 6 hours. Use this if you have a clear idea of how much focused work you want to do each day.

From productivity goals

Links the Assistant to an existing goal from your Goals & Alerts list. When you select this option, a second dropdown appears with your available productivity goals; choose the one you want to track as your featured goal.

This keeps the goal in sync: if you edit the goal in Goals & Alerts, the Assistant updates automatically. It's the best option if you're using a custom goal to track a specific type of work.

Daily Focus Goal modal with from productivity goals selected, showing a second dropdown with more than 3h on Focus Work (24x7) selected, and a Save Daily Focus Goal button

💡 You can also set which goal appears in the Assistant by starring any goal from the Goals & Alerts page. The star and the "from productivity goals" setting are connected: starring a goal from Goals & Alerts is equivalent to selecting it here.