Personalizing our Routines for our Unique Schedule and Goals: Setting up Startup and Shutdown times

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Personalizing our Routines in Focus Bear can help us reach our goals due to making the app work for our style instead of having to adapt to it.

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Focus Bear is a productivity and accountability app that you need to add to your toolbelt to set goals, stay on task and finish the day feeling accomplished. Not only does it use the Pomodoro technique to coordinate your focus and break times, but it recommends and allows you to personalize breaks that will help you feel better throughout the day such as drinking water, tidying up your desk, doing pushups, mindful breathing and so much more.

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If you already have the hang of how Focus Bear works and have experienced success first-hand, read more to find tips to personalize your experience with this app to help you reach new heights in your productivity journey. 

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The first step is to customize the Focus Bear app to help bring structure to your routines by allowing the app to get to know you better by setting your preferences. 

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First, go to the preference tab. 

Once the Preferences page is open, click on Edit Habits which you will recognize by checkmark icon. Click on this and start your personalized journey in Focus Bear.

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In this space, you will be in charge of creating your schedules, routines, and types of activities you will perform during your breaks. In this first part, we will go over setting the ideal start and shutdown time. 

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Now click on the timing tab and set your ideal Startup time and Shutdown time. The settings in Focus Bear at set to a Startup time of 5:15 Am and a Shutdown time of 8:30 PM.

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Of course, you can make the times earlier or later than your current schedule. If you are aiming to wake up earlier or go to sleep earlier you might also want to challenge yourself to set your timing on Focus Bear to reflect that. 

Set your desirable schedule to start your morning routine.

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Pro tip: Challenge yourself to wake up at the ideal time that you think will lead you to be more productive. It is helpful to remember most sleep cycles are about an hour and a half. This means you can aim to sleep four (6 hours) to six (9 hours) full cycles to wake up feeling rested. Also, remember that it takes us on average 14 minutes to fall asleep. You can use the sleep calculator to check the time you should go to sleep or wake up to respect your sleep cycles and not wake up in the middle of them so you feel less cranky and tired. 

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Set your desirable schedule to turn off your computer in the evening.

Challenge yourself to log off your computer earlier than normal if you feel you are in the habit of working much after work hours (starting with disconnecting just 15-30 minutes before your regular time may be helpful to regulate your sleep pattern and it is a good start ).

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Pro tip:  set a blue light filter if you ever do have to work later than usual.

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The website f.lux provides a blue light filter by downloading their software. This is a good option. Another idea is activating the blue light filter that comes with some more recent models of computers, laptops, tablets, etc. 

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Pro tip: Make sure if your goal is to wake up earlier, set yourself up to wake up 15 min to an hour earlier incrementally until you reach your goal. Setting smaller habits makes us more likely to be motivated to do them and the sense of achievement we achieve with them, helps us gain momentum to keep it going the following days. 

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Pro-Tech Tip:👉 Make sure to click “Save and Restart” to complete and save your setup. 

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Once you click save, the app will restart automatically.

✅ Now you're all set to start the Focus Bear app! If you ever need to go back in and change these settings, because you have discovered what works and what doesn´t, you may repeat this same process and customize your preferences as many times as you need!

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We are so excited to see what the Focus Bear app has in store for you. Congratulations on taking the time and investing your effort and reflection to prioritize your custom routines!