FocusTime

FocusTime is a Premium-only feature. It works by blocking distracting websites so you can focus on productive activities. FocusTime does not block desktop applications. 

You can start a FocusTime session by selecting " Get Focused..." from the RescueTime application menu, accessed by clicking on the RescueTime icon.

On Mac, the RescueTime icon is in the menu bar.

On Windows, it is in the system tray.

In the latest version of RescueTime on Windows, this is what the system tray looks like.

This will open the FocusTime window where you set the length of the FocusTime session.

Once FocusTime has been activated, you will see an indication of the session time remaining in the menu.  (Here "Focused for 5 minutes".)

During FocusTime when you go to a website you scored or ranked as "Personal" or "Distracting" depending on your site block level (details to come), then you'll see a FocusTime block page. You can choose to continue with the distraction, rescore it to "Other Work," or continue to focus.

You can access the FocusTime settings page by selecting FocusTime from the Tools menu on the RescueTime website.

The FocusTime settings page shows information about FocusTime along with the FocusTime settings below.

You can select the level of blocking strictness to be Normal, Intermediate, or Strict.  

The "Preview you block list" link will display the list of sites that RescueTime will block according to the current site-blocking level.  

You can also choose to unblock a specific site during a FocusTime session.  With the "Exceptions" link you can create a list of sites that you can access even though they would normally be blocked according to the productivity ranking of the top-level domain.  For example, you can enter "www.youtube.com/xyz" to be allowed, while blocking the general domain youtube.com.

At the bottom of the page, you will find information about automatically starting FocusTime with an alert. You can find more details about managing your alerts here.