Productivity Tactics Archives - Page 16 of 38

Setting up your Serene focus session routine

The first time I installed Serene, I was mostly just clicking around because I had no idea where stuff was. Nothing seemed especially intuitive at first glance, but eventually I figured out that the main use case I wanted was basically: block distractions, get a thing done, check it off. My brain really just wanted that little green checkmark 🙂

So here’s how I made a basic focus session that actually helped:

1. Open Serene and head to the left-side menu where you see “Today.” That’s your task plan for the day.
2. Add a task like “Write blog post” or “Go through unread emails.” Keep it small enough that it won’t take more than 2 hours — Serene isn’t good with big vague projects.
3. Click the task, and you’ll see a Focus Session button. This starts the timer.
4. Choose how long you want to focus — usually I do 50-minute deep sessions.
5. Here’s the key: toggle on the website blocking BEFORE you start the timer. It doesn’t retroactively turn things off if it’s already running.
6. Add breathing or stretch breaks if you need them using the options below the timer.

Sometimes the website blocking fails completely and I end up on YouTube anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. If that happens, I manually block stuff with my browser extension (LeechBlock in Firefox), but I usually forget and then suddenly 30 minutes have gone hot-swapping MIDI cables.

And yes, the calendar integration looks promising but I’ve never once gotten it to sync with anything properly. I just ignore it.

What to do when focus data disappears

One extremely frustrating thing that’s happened to me a few times: I’ll run a bunch of sessions, feel productive, then go check my session history… and it’s empty. No stats, no graph, just a big zero next to “Weekly Focus Time.”

A few things I tried when this happened:

– Restarting the desktop app (did nothing)
– Logging out and logging back in (this caused two sessions to randomly reappear but not the others)
– Clearing cache manually (Serene doesn’t have this as a built-in setting, but I cleared AppData on Windows anyway — also didn’t work)

Eventually I figured out that when my laptop shut down unexpectedly during a session, Serene just… didn’t save anything. The session data gets stored only if the timer ends properly or you manually click the button to stop it.

So now I always make sure the session timer finishes before I close my laptop. Super annoying, but I’ve gotten used to it.

Tracking weekly progress when data resets

Every Sunday night, Serene resets your weekly view. That part is by design. But if you didn’t export your data or take a screenshot beforehand, you lose track of what you did in the previous week.

To patch around this, I started doing the following:

– Create a recurring task in my own calendar every Sunday evening called “Log Serene focus stats.”
– Open Serene quickly before it resets anything Monday morning.
– Manually type the past week’s focus hours into a Notion table (I use a template where each row is a week).

Here’s what that chart roughly looks like:

| Week Starting | Total Focus Hours | Top Task |
|—————|——————-|————————|
| Apr 1 | 12 | Blog writing |
| Apr 8 | 8 | Automation cleanup |
| Apr 15 | 10 | Backlog processing |

Is there an export feature for Serene? Technically, yes. But it only outputs in CSV format, and it’s hidden under your account settings (not under stats, weirdly). Also, half the time mine generates an error when I try it. So I gave up and just record manually.

Trying to automate with Zapier and failing repeatedly

Yes, I absolutely tried setting up Zapier to log my focus sessions automatically into a Google Sheet or Notion database. Did it work? No. Nothing worked. Here’s why.

Serene doesn’t offer a native Zapier integration. You can’t search for it within Zapier’s app list. So I tried two janky workarounds:

1. Use a local text file that logs session times, and observe changes using a tool like FolderSync → trigger a Zap from that somehow (didn’t go far).
2. Trigger a webhook POST from a Serene session by using a custom script running in the background — but Serene doesn’t expose any events or APIs publicly.

Eventually I went down a rabbithole of trying to use UI automation with Keyboard Maestro (on Mac) to scrape the daily stats and copy them to clipboard. Let me tell you, nothing makes you feel more like a gremlin than automating a GUI click just to read a number.

So yeah. Total failure. I still just manually log things once a week.

Why timer alerts sometimes don’t play

There were days when I clearly heard no sound when my focus session ended. I’d find myself still deep in work, only to look up and realize the timer had been done for 20 minutes.

Turns out Serene’s alert sound output is extremely picky:

– If any Bluetooth audio device connects or disconnects mid-session — poof, no sound.
– If your system volume is muted or Serene is no longer the last active app, you won’t hear the bell.
– On Windows, if you use virtual audio routing (like I do with OBS), it eats the audio unless manually routed.

Honestly, I’ve gotten used to just watching the timer wind down and not expecting any noise at all. The only real fix I found: enabling desktop notifications from the OS level, so I get a visual popup even if the sound doesn’t work.

How I prioritize tasks between Serene and Notion

I used to try importing my full Notion task database into Serene every morning, but that just turned into clutter. Serene doesn’t handle complex projects or priorities — it wants like seven tasks max for the day.

Now I just pick the top 2–3 priorities each morning inside Notion, tag them with “FocusToday,” and manually retype them into Serene. Yes, it’s redundant. No, there is no sync. But it forces me to consciously plan.

Here’s a basic table of how I filter:

Sometimes I’ll also use analog reminders. I have a sticky note on my monitor that says “Only ONE task in Serene.” Because there’s nothing more tempting than loading your day with 15 sessions and doing none 🙂

Fixing accidental task deletions in Serene

I once deleted a task I hadn’t finished yet by accident — I thought I was removing it from today’s list, but it got nuked entirely. No undo. No archive. It was just gone.

Steps that DID NOT work:
– Cmd+Z (no undo functionality in Serene)
– Re-adding the task manually (loses your old session history)
– Searching for it by name (Serene search only covers active tasks)

Workaround: I happened to have the older version of the task name still in my clipboard history (thank you, Clipboard Manager), so I pasted it and recreated a version. But the session data was lost.

So lesson learned: if I remove a task early, I screenshot the day’s stats first. Yes, that’s dumb. But it’s saved me a few times.

Session summaries that never update correctly

In theory, under the “This Week” tab, you get a nice donut chart of where your time went. In practice, this chart often skips whole sessions or fails to update until you restart the app.

Things that seemed to sometimes trigger a refresh:
– Clicking away to another week and back
– Fully quitting and relaunching the app (not just X-ing it)
– Adding a new dummy task, starting a timer, and canceling it

It’s like the app doesn’t run a refresh event on task end — it waits until something else triggers a redraw. I emailed support about it once and got a response after five days saying they’re “working on performance improvements.”

Meanwhile, I just rely on my own Notion logs instead. Some habits die hard, like trying to get accurate data from software that doesn’t want to give it to you.