Tutorial: Creating Custom Focus Blocks That Repeat Weekly
Posted: November 4, 2026 · 2 min read
Choose your peak energy hours
Before creating focus blocks, decide when your best deep work happens. For most people, this is the first two to three hours of the workday, before meetings start pulling you in different directions. Others peak after lunch or in the late afternoon.
The key: pick hours that are consistently free (or can be made free) across all your calendars. Check your unified view in manyCalendars and look for patterns. Is Tuesday 8-10 AM reliably open on all calendars? That is your focus block.
Create the recurring block
Step 1: In manyCalendars, click on the time slot where you want your focus block to begin. Select "Create Event."
Step 2: Title it something clear. "Focus Time" or "Deep Work" works. If you want it to show as busy on a specific calendar, select which calendar it should appear on.
Step 3: Set the recurrence to "Weekly." Choose which days you want it to repeat on. Most people start with two or three days per week. You can always add more later.
Step 4: Enable "Block on other calendars." This creates corresponding busy blocks on your other calendars so that colleagues on those accounts cannot book over your focus time.
That is it. The blocks repeat every week until you change or delete them.
Handling exceptions without breaking the series
Life happens. A client's quarterly review lands on your focus block. A mandatory all-hands gets scheduled during your protected time. You need to skip one instance without deleting the whole recurring series.
In manyCalendars, click on the specific occurrence (not the series) and select "Skip this week." The block disappears for that one date but returns the following week automatically. No need to recreate anything.
If you find yourself skipping the same block every week, that is a signal to move it. Find a time slot that your clients consistently leave open and relocate the series there.
Your focus time is not a suggestion. It is infrastructure. Protect it the way you protect client meetings. manyCalendars makes it two clicks to set up and zero effort to maintain.