Your Google Calendar Isn’t Broken—It’s Just Missing This Deep Work Layer

TL;DR

• Google Calendar is great for scheduling meetings — but not so great at protecting your time from them.

• This last month, one of the apps here on Tool Finder launched something called Focus Time and we played with it.

• For most of us, the calendar fills up with calls, catch-ups, and invites faster than we can plan for actual work.

• The result? “Heads-down” time gets squeezed out, leaving little space for the deep, focused work that actually moves things forward.

What Focus Time in Reclaim does?

• In a world where calendars are overflowing with meetings and distractions are everywhere, finding time for focused, meaningful work has become a challenge.

• That’s why Reclaim AI is launching a powerful new feature: Focus Time — designed to help you protect hours each week for the work that really matters.

Our verdict

• This one is incredibly helpful if you're struggling to use Google Calendar and Outlook to block our time one of the things that this does very well is just do it for you, but it can sometimes be slightly aggressive.

• That's why you need to reign in the optional when you're setting it to be reactive or productive, but although in all a good feature for those who are looking for a little bit more force control that busy time in the calendar.

What is Focus Time in Reclaim?

Focus Time is a smart scheduling feature that proactively blocks time on your calendar for heads-down, distraction-free work. Rather than overhauling your schedule or cancelling meetings, it works with your existing priorities to carve out time for deep work, based on your weekly goals.

Here’s how it works:

• Set your Weekly Focus Goal — Define how many hours you want to dedicate to focused work each week.

• Reclaim handles the rest — It finds available time in your calendar and protects it, adjusting as your schedule evolves.

• Track your productivity — See how much real deep work time you’re getting each week and adjust your goals as needed.

Why is this useful?

Focus Time isn’t just a personal productivity boost — it’s a team benefit. With the option to set Team Focus Time templates, new teammates can start with a recommended weekly goal, making deep work a shared priority across your organisation. The result? Fewer interruptions, better outcomes, and healthier work-life balance for everyone.

How to get started?

Getting started with Focus Time in Reclaim takes just a few minutes — and the setup is flexible enough to match your role, workload, and changing schedule. Here’s how to put it into action:

1. Connect Your Calendar

Start by creating a free Reclaim account and connecting your Google Calendar. This allows Reclaim to view your schedule and dynamically protect blocks of time around your existing commitments.

2. Set a Weekly Focus Goal

Decide how much deep work time you need each week. This might be 10 hours for a content creator, or 3 short sessions for a manager. Reclaim lets you define your goal and adapts automatically to help you reach it.

You can choose between:

• Proactive Mode – Automatically books focus time in advance

• Reactive Mode – Only adds blocks when your schedule fills up

Advanced settings let you tweak ideal session lengths, daily limits, and availability windows.

3. Let Reclaim Schedule Focus Time

Reclaim scans your calendar and begins scheduling flexible, movable blocks of time to meet your goal. It works around existing events, and if your schedule changes, it adjusts — no need to manually move things around.

If you already use Reclaim’s Tasks or Habits features, those count toward your Focus Time goal automatically.

4. Track Your Progress

Your Reclaim dashboard shows how much protected focus time you’ve actually had, alongside time spent in meetings, habits, and admin. This helps you spot where your time is going — and adjust for better balance.