Your Focus Score is one number that answers a simple question: of the time you were actively working, how much of it was quality work time?

The formula, exactly

Focus Score = (focus + ½ × neutral) ÷ (focus + neutral + distraction) × 100

Focus time counts in full. Neutral time counts half — email and calendars are work, but they're not deep work. Distraction counts zero. That's the whole thing: no hidden factors, no penalties for switching apps, no bonus for completing sessions. A day spent entirely in neutral apps scores 50; only focused work reaches 100.

The six states on your timeline

Every moment of your day lands in one of six states:

Focus (green): apps categorized as productive work — your editor, your documents, your design tool. Counts in full.

Neutral (blue): neither work nor distraction — unrecognized sites, system tools, most communication. Counts half.

Personal (yellow): things you've marked as personal, off the clock — left out of the score entirely.

Distraction (red): apps and sites categorized as distracting — social media, entertainment. Counts zero.

Idle (gray): your computer is on but you haven't touched it for 5 minutes (adjustable in Settings → Tracking).

Away (hatched): no activity for 15 minutes — you've likely left the desk. Idle and Away don't count against your score at all.

One more lever: if you set working hours in Settings → Tracking, the score covers only that window — your evening browsing stops diluting your workday. More in Working Hours.

Make the categories match YOUR work

Here's the important part: no app is inherently "distracting." YouTube is a distraction for an accountant and raw material for a video editor. FocusNow ships with 17 built-in categories and AI-powered categorization, but you have the final say:

1. Open Activities, find any app or site, and use ⋯ → Change category.

2. Or go to Settings → Apps and URLs for per-app and per-site overrides, sorted by your most-used.

3. In Settings → Categories you can change what any category counts as — Focus, Neutral, Personal, or Distraction — and create your own categories.

Spend five minutes on this in your first week. A score built on categories that match your reality is a score you can trust — and improve.

How to actually improve the score

Don't chase the number — read it. The clearest view is Analytics → Focus score by hour: most people discover 2-3 golden hours where focus comes easily. The Dashboard timeline tells the same story for a single day, and your AI Daily Report will often point the pattern out for you. Protect those hours for your hardest work, and put a Deep Work session on them. The score rises as a side effect of better decisions, not the other way around.