Focus on Five Is Back. And Better Than Ever with AI!
- Aldo
- Dec 1, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 13
Almost ten years ago, in July 2016, I released one of my first iOS apps to the App Store. It was called Focus on Five, and it was born from something I'd learned about myself early in life: when I'm focused on what truly matters, I'm at my best.
Here's the thing about me—I get excited about pretty much everything. New ideas, new projects, interesting rabbit holes to explore. It's a blessing and a curse. All that enthusiasm can easily scatter my energy and distract me from accomplishing what actually matters. So I built the Focus on Five app to help me: a simple app to give me the meaningful focus I needed with five priorities each week. Not an endless to-do list with tons of small tasks. Not overwhelming goals that would take a long time to achieve. Just five things that deserve my focused attention.
The app found its audience. People connected with the philosophy that you can do anything, but not everything. But technology moves fast, and over the years, Focus on Five needed more than updates—it needed a complete reimagining.
A Fresh Start
I'm thrilled to announce that Focus on Five has been completely rewritten from the ground up.
This isn't a minor refresh. We rebuilt the entire app using Apple's latest technologies to create an experience that feels native, fast, and intuitive across iPhone, iPad, and now Apple Watch. Every screen, every interaction, every detail has been reconsidered and redesigned.
But the biggest addition? That would be Dexter AI.
Meet Dexter AI
Dexter AI is your AI companion, built to help you define your weekly priorities. This isn't a generic chatbot — Dexter AI is powered by advanced AI and built through a rigorous design process to shape its behavior, personality, and expertise specifically for Focus on Five. Every conversation is designed to help you define what matters this week.
Behind every inference is a deliberate process — engineering the right prompts and system instructions, injecting meaningful user context, and continuously testing and refining to ensure every conversation feels personal and useful.
Maybe you've got a big, ambitious goal that feels too overwhelming to start. Dexter AI will help you break it down into actionable weekly priorities—small enough to accomplish, meaningful enough to matter.
Or maybe you're on the opposite end. You've got hundreds of tasks swirling around in your head, and everything feels equally urgent. Dexter AI will help you cut through the noise and make sure you don't get caught up doing small tasks over and over again. Instead, you'll identify what truly deserves your focus this week.
Dexter AI understands that the goal isn't to do more—it's to do what matters.
What's New
Here's what you'll find in the reimagined Focus on Five:
Completely rebuilt for modern Apple devices. Native performance on iPhone and iPad with an intuitive interface that gets out of your way.
Timeless paper agenda feel. From the font style to the background texture, we designed Focus on Five with the classic look of paper in mind.
Apple Watch support. Your priorities go where you go. Quick glances and gentle reminders right on your wrist.
Dexter AI integration. Stuck? Overwhelmed? Not sure where to start? Have a conversation with Dexter AI and get clarity.
The same powerful philosophy. Reflect. Define. Remind. Accomplish. The weekly rhythm that helps you stay connected to what matters.
Why This Still Matters
Ten years later, the core problem hasn't changed—if anything, it's gotten worse. We're busier than ever, more distracted than ever, and more overwhelmed by options than ever before. The great ideas we have keep slipping through the cracks while we react to whatever feels urgent in the moment.
Focus on Five isn't about productivity hacks or becoming some kind of optimization machine. It's about pausing once a week to ask yourself: what actually matters to me right now? And then showing up for those things.
That simple practice has made a real difference in my life. I hope it does the same for yours.
Try It Free
Focus on Five is completely free to use. You can track all five priorities—add them, update them, reorder them, mark them complete—without paying anything. The entire weekly rhythm is yours at no cost.
The only paid feature is Dexter AI. We spent considerable time evaluating AI models, performance, and costs to ensure that every conversation delivers real value — at a price that makes sense for you.
Choosing the right LLM provider, balancing model quality against token costs, and anticipating user interaction were critical to ensuring real value for users.
When you're ready to have a conversation with your AI companion, you've got options: grab 1,000 messages with a one-time payment, no subscription required. For example, if you typically send around 50 messages per conversation each week, that 1,000-message pack will last you about five months. You can also choose a monthly or yearly subscription for unlimited access.
A lot of effort went into this rewrite. I hope you'll love it.
Here's to focusing on what matters—one week at a time.
Aldo
