45-minute focus session for practising an instrument with brown noise, if you have done this a hundred times

1 Before you start

• Decide now what you will do when the timer ends. Otherwise the decision will eat the first five minutes.
• Tell yourself the goal is time spent, not output produced.
• Take one slow breath before you press start, so the session has a beginning.
• Lower the bar until starting feels almost silly, then start.
• Put your phone in another room, or in a drawer you cannot reach without standing up.

2 While the timer runs

• If you feel restless, change your posture rather than your task.
• When you finish a piece, pause for three seconds before starting the next. It keeps the pace honest.
• If you are stuck, say the problem out loud. It changes what you can see.
• When you notice you have drifted, do not restart the block. Just come back and carry on counting from where the timer is.

3 When it ends

• Put the notes you made where you will find them next time.
• Look out of a window for thirty seconds. Your eyes have been at one distance for a while.
• Leave the file open if you are coming back. Closing it makes restarting harder.

4What to put on

brown noise — Lower and softer than white noise, closer to a waterfall heard from a distance. Good if white noise feels too hissy.