45-minute focus block for coding — a fan or air conditioner, when you have more time than usual

1 Before you start

• Close the door, or put headphones on, whichever signals "working" to the people around you.
• Promise yourself you will not check anything until the timer ends, including "just quickly".
• Put your phone in another room, or in a drawer you cannot reach without standing up.
• Lower the bar until starting feels almost silly, then start.
• Close every tab that is not needed for this one task. Not minimised — closed.

2 While the timer runs

• If nothing is working, write badly on purpose for two minutes.
• If you are bored, the boredom is usually the last thing before something clicks.
• The first urge to stop usually arrives early. Sit through it once and the second one is quieter.
• When you catch yourself re-reading the same sentence, stop and write down what you were looking for.

3 When it ends

• Write down the question you could not answer, so it has somewhere to live.
• Say the session is finished, out loud if you can. It marks the boundary.
• Look out of a window for thirty seconds. Your eyes have been at one distance for a while.

4What to put on

a fan or air conditioner — A constant mechanical hum with no variation. The lack of change is the point — nothing in it asks for your attention.