Focus session · brainstorming · 50 min
50-minute brainstorming session with forest at dusk and a timer, when you are somewhere noisy
Sit down, press start, and generate options for 50 minutes. Fifty minutes, the length of a therapy hour, with ten minutes off afterwards.
50:00
Press start. The timer keeps time so you do not have to look at a clock.
Notice the temperature of the air on the backs of your hands. Noise is fine. You are not trying to hear anything subtle. Follow the instructions and let the rest look after itself.
1 Before you start
- Go to the toilet first. It sounds trivial until you are mid-sentence.
- 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.
- Tell yourself the goal is time spent, not output produced.
- Get water now, so you do not have to get up in fifteen minutes.
2 While the timer runs
- When you notice you have drifted, do not restart the block. Just come back and carry on counting from where the timer is.
- If you start tidying your desk, that is avoidance. Sit back down.
- If you feel the urge to check something, write it on the paper beside you and keep going. Deal with the list afterwards.
- If the task suddenly feels impossible, make it smaller rather than stopping. One paragraph. One function. One row.
3 When it ends
- Have a drink of water before you check anything.
- Leave the file open if you are coming back. Closing it makes restarting harder.
- Leave the desk tidier than you found it. Two minutes now saves ten later.
4What to put on
forest at dusk — Birds settling, leaves moving, nothing sudden. It works because it sounds like a place you can safely ignore.
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