50-minute focus block for practising an instrument — brown noise, when you have been on screens all day

1 Before you start

• Set the timer where you can see it, or where you can deliberately not see it.
• Accept that the first five minutes will feel like wading. Wading counts.
• Put your phone in another room, or in a drawer you cannot reach without standing up.
• Tell yourself the goal is time spent, not output produced.
• Dim the screen slightly. Bright screens make long sessions harder than they need to be.

2 While the timer runs

• If you are bored, the boredom is usually the last thing before something clicks.
• If your attention keeps sliding, shorten the next block rather than abandoning this one.
• If nothing is working, write badly on purpose for two minutes.
• Notice the moment your hand moves toward your phone. That moment is the whole skill.

3 When it ends

• Note what you actually got done, not what you meant to get done.
• Write down the question you could not answer, so it has somewhere to live.
• Resist the urge to review the work straight away. Come back to it later with fresh eyes.

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.