25-minute focus session for data work with café murmur, when you have woken up too early

1 Before you start

• Set the timer where you can see it, or where you can deliberately not see it.
• Choose one question to answer in this block, rather than a whole subject to cover.
• Put the thing you keep reaching for out of arm's reach.
• Decide in advance that a bad sentence is still progress.
• Decide now what you will do when the timer ends. Otherwise the decision will eat the first five minutes.

2 While the timer runs

• If you are bored, the boredom is usually the last thing before something clicks.
• Notice the moment your hand moves toward your phone. That moment is the whole skill.
• If you feel restless, change your posture rather than your task.
• When you get an idea for something else, park it. Do not follow it.

3 When it ends

• Look out of a window for thirty seconds. Your eyes have been at one distance for a while.
• Resist the urge to review the work straight away. Come back to it later with fresh eyes.
• Leave the file open if you are coming back. Closing it makes restarting harder.

4What to put on

café murmur — The blur of other people talking, with none of the words close enough to follow. Some people concentrate better with a low level of company.