50-minute focus block for reading — forest at dusk, when the weather has kept you inside

1 Before you start

• Put your phone in another room, or in a drawer you cannot reach without standing up.
• Decide that today's session does not have to be good. It has to happen.
• Dim the screen slightly. Bright screens make long sessions harder than they need to be.
• If you are dreading it, make the first action physical: open the file, sharpen the pencil.
• Go to the toilet first. It sounds trivial until you are mid-sentence.

2 While the timer runs

• If nothing is working, write badly on purpose for two minutes.
• If you are stuck, say the problem out loud. It changes what you can see.
• Notice whether you are working or performing work. They look similar from the outside.
• 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

• Leave the desk tidier than you found it. Two minutes now saves ten later.
• Write down the question you could not answer, so it has somewhere to live.
• Have a drink of water before you check anything.

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.