FocusMe Community
Glad to be here... - Printable Version

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Glad to be here... - InternetFiend - 03-12-2019

Hey everyone,

I'm Alex and realised maybe 7 years ago that I was very badly addicted to procrastinating on the internet and had been for a long time prior without realising.

Procrastination in general increasingly became an issue for me as I run my own business and can work whenever I want often with no external deadlines.

Over the last 7 years I've tried many things to help tackle my addiction (which would sometimes swallow up 19 hours of my day) including seeing a psychologist, speaking to friends, setting long complicated passwords for other Time Limit apps, using other internet blocking apps, meditating, writing actionable lists etc etc.

Nothing really worked and I would go through good periods and long bad periods.

I needed something really powerful to completely prevent me from constantly relapsing. I started using ScreenTime on my iPhone and gave my friend the password to adjust the settings for it - this meant I could no longer reinstall distracting apps like Snapchat or Messenger - and could no longer uninstall my 3rd-party website blocking software whenever I wanted to.

But my computer was still a problem. I use it for work so I couldn't just create a parentally controlled account for myself to use and give the admin password to a friend as I need to regularly change settings and install things etc.

I had that same third-party internet blocking software I use on my iPhone on the computer but whenever I wanted to get round it I would simply force uninstall it.

If I couldn't be bothered doing that I would just use one of the never-ending web proxies out there to access whatever blocked website I wanted. I would continuously add countless proxies to my blocklist but new ones would show up everyday.

At some point very recently I saw someone online mentioned FocusMe as being a powerful tool to use for helping with internet addiction. I doubted it would be more powerful than the software I was already using but I had a look at their website and was impressed by the features of the app.

I took out the trial and knew immediately I would be paying for the lifetime membership. The ability to prevent user uninstalling is completely priceless... It means it's actually effective. And the RegEx ability is possibly unique? I no longer have to seek out every proxy website known to mankind to add to my blocklist - because FocusMe sees the blocked website or keywords in the page title regardless if the url has been scrambled. The various different levels of forced mode are useful. The time limit is great, I need to spend more time learning how the break mode thing works, I've been too afraid to use it in Forced Mode in case it means it's constantly active and cannot be edited then. I used a custom 90min Deep Focus/Pomodoro mode for work today and loved it.

Sorry if this sounds like an ad, it really isn't. I have no relationship with anyone involved in this company.

But I'm just super grateful that something like this exists because for others like me it's tough living in a world where you can't just cut out your addiction completely like you can with alcohol or gambling, the internet is a part of many of our careers. Being able to firmly control it is so liberating.

Thanks for having me here. I hope the features become more and more customisable and I hope more people find out about this software.


RE: Glad to be here... - glenn - 03-13-2019

Hi, Ales. We're happy to have you here!

It's nice to know that FocusMe is helping you with your addiction. If you have any questions or need help with the program, you can go to focusme.com and chat with us (customer support) there or create a ticket here: https://focusme.com/support/

Feel free to take a look around and stay productive!


RE: Glad to be here... - tracy99 - 05-06-2019

Same here, I'm glad to read that I'm not the only one with issues. As Glenn said: stay productive. Thank you guys! Smile


RE: Glad to be here... - emsadventures - 05-13-2019

I feel the same way! Thanks for such a great software!!!


RE: Glad to be here... - alejandro - 08-07-2019

Glad that FocusMe is helping you @tracy99 and @emsadventures. Have you tried the latest version of FocusMe? We have improved a lot since then. Try it for yourselves and let us know what you think. Smile