50-minute focus session for applications and forms with forest at dusk, when you need to stop thinking about work

1 Before you start

• Put the thing you keep reaching for out of arm's reach.
• Remember that motivation usually arrives after starting, not before.
• Have a piece of paper beside you for the thoughts that will try to interrupt.
• Decide what you will do if you get stuck: write the problem out, then move on.
• Dim the screen slightly. Bright screens make long sessions harder than they need to be.

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.
• When you get an idea for something else, park it. Do not follow it.
• If you are suddenly sleepy, stand up for ten seconds and sit back down.
• If you are bored, the boredom is usually the last thing before something clicks.

3 When it ends

• Take the break away from the screen, even if it is just the other side of the room.
• Look out of a window for thirty seconds. Your eyes have been at one distance for a while.
• Write down the question you could not answer, so it has somewhere to live.

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.