Focus sessions: earn minutes by leaving your phone alone

What a focus session is

MoveFirst puts the apps you choose behind a calm block screen, and activity buys minutes to open them. A focus session is the stillest of those earn paths: you start a session, everything you blocked stays blocked, and you leave the phone alone. There is nothing to count and nothing to perform — the session simply runs while you write the essay, clear the inbox, or get through the chapter.

For students and desk workers this is the path that matters most, because the hours you most want protected are the hours you are already sitting down. A focus session turns that sitting into earning without asking you to leave the chair.

The honest accounting

The default rate is deliberately modest: a 60-minute focus session earns 15 minutes in the bank. Focus is easier to accumulate than push-ups, so its exchange rate is quieter — and like every rate in MoveFirst, it is editable. See how the rates work on the how-it-works page if the default doesn't fit your day.

Sessions have a 15-minute minimum, which is a platform scheduling floor rather than a judgment. Ending early keeps the honest share: credit is pro-rated and rounded up to the nearest 30 seconds, so stopping at minute 40 still banks what those 40 minutes earned. Stopping early is a win, not a forfeit.

The one hard edge is at the very start: under a minute of focus earns nothing. That is a statement about the session, never about the person who started it.

Focus or movement — when each fits

MoveFirst's faster earners are the ten camera-counted moves — push-ups, squats, sit-ups, jumping jacks, plank and more — counted live on your phone, never recorded, never sent. A single push-up buys a minute; ten squats buy five. Alongside them sit equally valid camera-free routes: a short walk measured by the step counter, where a 3-minute walk earns 10 minutes, and the focus sessions this page is about.

The split is practical, not moral. Between classes or on a break, a quick set of squats earns minutes in under a minute of effort. In a library, a meeting, or an open-plan office, a focus session earns without anyone noticing — and it protects the very block of work you started it for. Neither path is the better citizen; they are different tools for different hours.

How a working day earns the evening

Daily steps close the loop. Opt in to your Apple Health steps and ordinary walking earns on its own — every 1,000 steps come back as 5 minutes, up to 30 minutes a day, with no session needed. The walk to the station and the coffee run count without you starting anything.

Pair that with a single afternoon focus session and a plain working day quietly funds the evening: steps drip in through the day, an hour of deep work adds 15 more. The bank holds 60 minutes by default, adjustable from 15 to 240, so minutes get spent rather than hoarded. When the time you open runs out, the block returns by itself, and tomorrow's focus earns tomorrow's minutes.

Momentum grows with any of it — a session, a walk, a day of steps — and cools gently when life intervenes. It never resets to zero, and there are no streaks to lose. A missed day is just a day.

Nothing here is fixed

Every exchange rate can be edited, the bank cap can move, and Health steps are opt-in. If the defaults feel too strict or too soft, three one-tap presets run from Ease me in to Challenge, and everything in between is yours to tune.

MoveFirst works without an account or a cloud — everything stays on your phone, and Apple's Screen Time hands the app a sealed token, so MoveFirst cannot see which apps you chose to block. The commercial terms are just as plain: a 3-day free trial, then €29.99 a year, cancel anytime before it renews — details sit in the pricing section on the homepage. And if a subscription ever lapses, blocking lifts; the app never holds your own apps hostage.