Focus session · coding · 45 min
45-minute coding session with distant thunder and a timer, if you are fitting this around other people
Sit down, press start, and work through the problem for 45 minutes. A single class period, the length most people can hold before the quality drops.
Press start. The timer keeps time so you do not have to look at a clock.
Let your tongue rest down, away from the roof of your mouth. It is designed to fit around other people’s schedules. Follow the instructions and let the rest look after itself.
1 Before you start
- Have a piece of paper beside you for the thoughts that will try to interrupt.
- Choose one question to answer in this block, rather than a whole subject to cover.
- Decide now what you will do when the timer ends. Otherwise the decision will eat the first five minutes.
- If you are dreading it, make the first action physical: open the file, sharpen the pencil.
- Clear the surface in front of you down to the thing you are working on.
2 While the timer runs
- When you have drifted for the fifth time, that is still four returns. Keep going.
- If nothing is working, write badly on purpose for two minutes.
- If a thought will not leave, give it one line on the page and return to the task.
- If you feel restless, change your posture rather than your task.
3 When it ends
- Decide whether the next block is the same task or a different one. Do not drift into it.
- Do not immediately open the thing you were avoiding. Give the block a proper end.
- Leave the desk tidier than you found it. Two minutes now saves ten later.
4What to put on
distant thunder — Low rumbles with long gaps. Suits people who find sudden noises more distracting than constant ones.
This page is a tool, not a course. Nothing is tracked, nothing is saved, and nobody is told whether you finished.
If this block does not fit, try 50-minute focus session for coding with plain quiet, when you need to stop thinking about work, A 25-minute block for portfolio work, with café murmur, when nothing else has worked today or Deep work timer: 50 minutes of writing (distant thunder), after a long day.