Massive productivity boost! My productivity has significantly increased since finding FocusMate. I was looking for a 'virtual coworking' type of arrangement that made it simple and convenient to book coworking sessions, but also holds me accountable to showing up to do my work. Just completed my 100th session with FocusMate and I'm loving it!

Today I had an important deadline to… Today I had an important deadline to work on, so used Focusmate. I booked a session. No show. They moved me to another session 2 minutes later. Had a good session. Booked another session. Some guy just staring at the screen. I said hello, just staring. I tried to get his attention. Just staring, saying nothing. I left the session and had to wait a further 15 minutes for the next session. No Show. Then I booked another session. Person turned up late. Couldn't get her camera on for 5 minutes. Then interupted my session to tell me what she was going to do. I spent more time messing about that actually being productive. Spoke with customer service who sent me a cut and paste job - 500 word essay. No time to read that. To be fair they gave me a refund. Looking for alternatives where others actually show up.

Needs improvement I've been using Focusmate for over 8 months and I have close to 200 sessions. If it was in the first few months, I would've given them a positive review because it was indeed a positive experience for me for the first few months. Unfortunately things started getting bad when Focusmate's community (especially the team behind it) reveals their dark side. 1. Every single day there has been posts on their facebook group about random strangers joining focusmate to do inappropriate acts. At one instance, for example, a man opened his pants in a session with a lady and showed his.... pen**. After a lot of these complaints, there was a gender feature released. But that's where things started getting darker. Turns out, the team behind Focusmate slowly started revealing their true colours when they showed their biased agenda towards the lgbtqi+. The complaints never stopped, even yesterday there were posts by women about men joining their sessions even though they had selected women only sessions mode in the settings. Turns out, the man claimed himself lgbtqi+ and the team behind it, including many community members started abusing anyone who would see that incident as wrong. The team behind it started censoring anyone who would speak about peace and resolutions and started promoting those who were spreading hateful comments. To them, it doesn't matter if women are in a vulnerable spot. To them, it also doesn't matter if religious faiths in the world are getting offended by their aggressive social conditioning. The community has now turned into a lgbtqi+ promotion centre. While there's nothing wrong in standing up for equal rights for marginalised groups in the world, which I definitely stand up for, but using those sentiments as a veil to form a community where people spread hatred towards other marginalised groups in the world is nothing but a political agenda. 2. This 2nd reason is a major issue. PRIVACY. When I was having good time with Focusmate, I wanted to invite my family members to Focusmate as well to keep me accountable. I started by asking my fiancée about it since we haven't moved in yet. She agreed to help me by using the private link to do session only with me. Great right? But she didn't wanted to turn on camera as she and I both are privacy focused. We don't even take much pictures, hardly like once or twice a year on family occasions. So I reached out to Focusmate support about it, I asked if our videos were being recorded in the video call or not? The support didn't responded straight. I kept asking and they handed me their privacy policy page. I read it full and nothing about video or audio being recorded was mentioned, which is sketchy. After that, I've always been sketchy about the team as they never gave a direct "yes" or "no" answer to that question. They could've simply said "no we don't, we would never do that!" but they didn't. Suspicious.

Now in my THIRD year as a customer Back in 2020, a close friend told me about work gyms – sites where you randomly match with an accountability buddy online to get work done. Of the ones I looked into, I selected Focusmate, frankly, because of the offer of "three free sessions per week." Nothing to lose by trying it out. The site uses a browser-based calendar through which you select timeslots to book your session with another user. Each session uses video, mic, and chat. But in each session you basically greet your session buddy, declare what you'll work on, and then you each get to your tasks, with you and the other person's video on. Co-working with video ("body doubling") turned out to be a powerful tool for my productivity. So I upgraded to the paid subscription of what was then just USD $5 per month for unlimited sessions. Focusmate has rules to ensure members' safety. When I wrote my first review, I had completed over 60 sessions and highly recommended it. Now I am over 1,200 session in, and it is still my absolute favorite productivity tool, also for the fantastic and diverse community of users and the respect for that diversity. The only (continued!) complaint I have is the limited payment options for international users. They really need to sort that out.

Great productivity tool 👍👍 -