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Focus session · planning · 45 min

45-minute focus session for planning with rain on a window, when you want to be left alone

45 minutes on planning — on paper, so you can see it. A single class period, the length most people can hold before the quality drops.

45:00

Press start. The timer keeps time so you do not have to look at a clock.

Let the floor take your weight through your feet, and stop holding yourself up for a second. Nothing here asks anything of you socially. Follow the instructions and let the rest look after itself.

1 Before you start

  • Close the door, or put headphones on, whichever signals "working" to the people around you.
  • Remind yourself that you are allowed to produce something mediocre in the first pass.
  • Put the thing you keep reaching for out of arm's reach.
  • Remember that motivation usually arrives after starting, not before.
  • Turn off notifications for the next block, not just to silent.

2 While the timer runs

  • If you are bored, the boredom is usually the last thing before something clicks.
  • If a thought will not leave, give it one line on the page and return to the task.
  • If your attention keeps sliding, shorten the next block rather than abandoning this one.
  • When you get an idea for something else, park it. Do not follow it.

3 When it ends

  • Say the session is finished, out loud if you can. It marks the boundary.
  • Leave the file open if you are coming back. Closing it makes restarting harder.
  • Roll your shoulders and your neck before the next block.

4What to put on

rain on a window — Steady rain is broadband noise with a slow natural rhythm. It masks speech and keyboard clatter without being interesting enough to listen to.

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 Focus session for practising an instrument: 45 minutes, a library, when you are doing this for the first time, Focus session for applications and forms: 50 minutes, a train carriage, after a difficult conversation or Deep work timer: 90 minutes of brainstorming (a train carriage), when you have tried everything else.