FocusTug

FocusTug is an AI productivity tool that actively blocks distractions, empowering individuals and team to achieve peak work efficiency.

Comment

Inspiration

Distractions are a major productivity killer. We often find ourselves becoming entangled in a web of distractions while working. In fact, statistics reveal that 84.4% of people experience distractions at work, with the internet being responsible for 41% of such distractions.

Although there are distraction-blocking tools available, they usually require you to manually list the websites that you find distracting. This approach overlooks the fact that most distractions happen mindlessly. Recognizing the need for a different approach, our team decided to leverage AI to enhance mindfulness while surfing the internet during work.

What it does

FocusTug browser extension detects and blocks distractions to help you stay focused on the task at hand. Essentially, it empowers individuals to escape the classic rabbit hole of working for one minute and getting distracted the next.

To detect distractions, FocusTug compares the content of a web page with the user's task. Depending on the user's preferences, the extension can either completely block distracting web pages after they've been opened or simply display a real-time "focus bar" that calculates the user's focus level throughout their session. It also enforces the Pomodoro Technique, ensuring that users achieve a good balance between work and break time. During break time, the distraction-blocking feature is disabled.

For an extra boost, users can create and join Accountability Groups where a daily leaderboard ranks group members based on their productivity level for the day. This gamified social experience aims to make teams more productive by incentivizing individuals to stay focused. It's noteworthy that the extension doesn't trample on the user's privacy as your browsing history is never logged on the backend.

How we built it

As a team of two - one engineer and one product designer - we began by scoping the project. I, as the engineer, had previously developed a prototype of FocusTug, although it was not built using the best technologies. Therefore, for this hackathon, we decided to completely rebuild it, with the assistance of the designer who contributed not only to the product's design but also to conceptualizing the idea.

The project combines Pinecone and gpt3.5turbo to determine the similarity between a web page and the user's task. By leveraging Pinecone, we are able to significantly enhance the accuracy of these comparisons.

Challenges we ran into

No challenges, really.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud that we've been able to build this project within the space of 3 days.

What we learned

Our research on distractions has shown us just how much danger distractions can pose to not just personal success but business operations.

What's next for FocusTug

We are committed to continuing the development of FocusTug because we firmly believe it addresses a significant problem. A simple Google search for "distractions reddit" reveals numerous threads created by individuals seeking assistance. The presence of many people seeking such help provides validation for FocusTug, and we plan to develop a mobile to further enhance its capabilities.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates