Intensity & Focus Blocks

Focus and intensity are the principles that drive deep work. Investing in long stretches of uninterrupted effort adds value directly to the customer.

“Great [companies] focus intensely on an opportunity where others see nothing. This focus and intensity helps to eliminate wasted effort and distractions. Most companies die from indigestion rather than starvation, i.e. companies suffer from doing too many things at the same time rather than doing too few things very well.” ~ Naveen Jain

Introduction

Meaningful work gets done when time is spent on the same activity for long stretches of time, without interruptions like checking emails, answering a call on Skype, or other forms of multitasking. Our system is designed to measure how focused you are throughout the day, in order to produce better higher quality results in less time. So, how does it work?

Calculating Focus

We calculate the Focus Score based on ‘streaks’. The streak gets higher the more consecutive time cards have the same activity. For example:

Predominant Activities in Time Card:

Streak:

Each time card represents 10 minutes, so a streak of 3, represents 30 minutes of time spent on the same activity without interruptions.

How it works

Every 30 minutes of spending time on the same activity, you earn ‘points’. The higher the streak, the more points you will earn:

Common mistakes

A streak of 60 minutes is not 10 points, but 15. Note that the table above states "Additional points" earned. A 2-hour block is 5+10+15+20=50 points and 2 streaks of 30 minutes is 5+5=10 points.

If you only work less than 30 minutes in a block, that doesn't count towards your focus score. So if you work 10 minutes, have a break, work 10 minutes, have a break and work 20 minutes, your focus score still will be 0.

Examples

Let’s calculate the points earned using the first example from above:

Predominant Activities in Time Card:

Streak:

Points earned:

Total Points Earned: 30 points

Focus Score: 30%

However, look how we can improve our score by simply rearranging the two activities so they occur within a more condensed grouping:

Predominant Activities in Time Card:

Streak:

Points earned:

Total Points Earned: 95 points

Focus Score: 95%

The Focus Score (as a %) is calculated by dividing the points earned, by 100. If the worker got more than 100 points, the score will be 100%.

For example, 30 points equals a Focus Score of 30%. Likewise, 95 points produces a score of 95%. However, 125 points ultimately yields 100%.

*Note: When points earned exceed 100, the Focus Score maxes out at 100%

A tale of two foci

In the first example below, several hours were worked. However, the large fragmentation of activity resulted in a lower Focus Score:

On the other hand, in this next example, a lower fragmentation of activity results in a higher Focus Score:

Calculating Intensity

Next, we want to learn how the Intensity Score is calculated.

Users’ timecards are considered “highly active” if they perform the following within a 10-minute time card:

  • Greater than 300 keystrokes

  • Greater than 50 mouse clicks (and/or scrolls)

The Intensity Score is calculated by dividing actual performance (keystrokes + mouse moves) by the “highly active” criteria. That is,

  • Intensity Score = [Actual performance] / [“Highly Active” standard]

For example, if a timecard contains 187 keystrokes and 33 mouse clicks, the Intensity Score will be calculated as follows:

  • Intensity Score = (187 + 33) / (300 + 50) = 63%

If either value - the keystroke count, or the mouse moves count - exceeds the “Highly Active” standard (of 300 keystrokes or 50 mouse moves), then we use the “Highly Active” standard as the limit upper limit for calculating Intensity.

For example, if a timecard contains 412 keystrokes and 33 mouse moves, we’ll cap our keystrokes at 300 (the “Highly Active” standard) when executing our calculation. Such an Intensity Score calculation would look like this:

  • Intensity Score = (300 + 33) / (300 + 50) = 95%

Common mistakes

The most common mistake is to ignore the top boundary of the keyboard and mouse activities. If you have 350 keystrokes and 75 mouse clicks these still count as 300 and 50 when you calculate with them.

Do not confuse the keystroke and mouse click boundaries, It's 300 for keystrokes and 50 for mouse clicks.

Calculating Daily Intensity

To calculate the Intensity Score for the entire day, we first calculate the score of all the time cards together. The following chart visualizes keystrokes (blue) and mouse clicks (red) throughout the day:

This graph visualizes the Intensity Score throughout the day:

To calculate the Intensity Score of the day, we must first count how many time cards the worker should complete on a given day, and use this figure as our denominator. Of course, this figure will depend on the worker. For example, someone who needs to produce 40 hours of work per week should work about eight hours per day.

At 10 minutes each, there will be 48 timecards per eight-hour period. We simply sum the score of all time cards in a day and then divide that number by the denominator we calculated above, or the total number of timecards in a day (48 in our example).

Intensity Scores by Card:

Calculate Daily Intensity

So, in this example the actual sum of Intensity Scores for all timecards = 31.9 (or 3192%). Now, divide actual score by the number of time cards required, as follows:

31.9 [actual] / 48 [required] = 67% Daily Intensity Score

Calculating Weekly Intensity

To calculate the Intensity Score for an entire week, first count how many time cards are required from the worker. For someone with a weekly requirement of 40 hours, they should have around 240 timecards. Therefore, the Intensity Score of the week is the average score of the top 240 timecards of the week.

Conclusion

Focus and intensity are the principles that drive deep work which, in turn, drives world-class performance. As Naveen Jain states in the quote above, focus and intensity support the elimination of distractions and waste, thereby boosting business results.

Investing in long stretches of uninterrupted effort adds value directly to the customer, and will produce world-class results, not only in this program, but in your remote career beyond.

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