“For me, there’s some kind of magical power in saying what you’re going to do out loud to another person,” said Sara Johnsen, a PhD student who has done about 20 Focused sessions.Īt the end of mine, Khoussainova seemed genuinely thrilled to hear I had finished all of my work. It’s the type of ambitious, solitary work that can be hard to get done-even for accomplished people. A friend of mine used her last session to brainstorm ideas for a startup, for example. Several Focused clients I spoke to said it was the ideal place for projects that aren’t urgent or even altogether necessary, but are nonetheless personally important and oftentimes difficult, like writing a book proposal or finally applying to graduate school. “I can’t think of a better word than ‘babysitting,’ but I’m not sure that’s the perfect analogy,” said Andy VanSickle-Ward, 40, a software developer who used his Focused session to finally organize the hundreds of emails that languished in his inbox. It’s a common service she and Granas say clients ask for, although some are reluctant to give up their devices even if they want to. About halfway through, as we had agreed upon, she took away my phone and put it in the waiting room. “It’s just attractive enough to be attractive but not so attractive that it sucks your energy away,” said Kate Rutter, 51, a UX designer and one of several clients Focused’s founders put me in touch with.Įvery 20 minutes, Khoussainova checked on my progress and gave me an update about the amount of time remaining in the session. House plants dotted each desk, and a side table draped with woven fabric provided a pop of color. The room was simply decorated-tasteful without being pretentious or intimidating. Two other people were already typing away when Khoussainova led me into the small office that would be my workspace for the next few hours. A handful of people attend each one.įocused staggers session times so each client can meet with staff individually. They now host tens of Focused sessions Tuesday through Friday each week but declined to specify exactly how many. Granas officially joined the company in August. Khoussainova began hosting sessions for friends at her house in Oakland, where she experimented with the format and length. “But after that conversation, the idea just really, really resonated with me.” “We were not planning to start a company at that point,” Khoussainova said. The pair came up with the idea for Focused this spring, while working alongside one another at a coffee shop. They met at Burning Man 10 years ago and came to Focused after stints in the tech world: Khoussainova earned a PhD in computer science and was at Twitter for over five years, while Granas most recently worked for a productivity app called Workflowy. Neither of Focused’s cofounders have a professional background in psychology, though Granas is working toward a master’s in the subject. (They do also offer financial aid.) The company has two newly opened offices, one in San Francisco and one in nearby Oakland, where clients show up with laptops and one or more daunting tasks they hope to cross off their to-do lists. That’s how I found myself inside a drab office building in downtown San Francisco, feeling more like I was on my way to a dentist appointment than to experience the latest productivity solution to come out of Silicon Valley.įocused has a deceptively simple premise: What if you could pay someone to help you accomplish undistracted work for a couple of hours? For $40 a pop, cofounders Nodira Khoussainova, 32, and Lee Granas, 40, put on a study hall of sorts, perfect for a certain breed of multitasking, multi-side-hustle, 21st-century adult. But I was feeling preoccupied and stressed, and I wanted this mythical destination to be real, so I signed up for one of the company’s sessions last month. I didn’t believe such a place really existed, outside of maybe a plane at 35,000 feet before the advent of inflight Wi-Fi.
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