Focus session · brainstorming · 50 min
50-minute focus session for brainstorming with café murmur, when you have tried everything else
50 minutes on brainstorming — quantity before quality. Fifty minutes, the length of a therapy hour, with ten minutes off afterwards.
Press start. The timer keeps time so you do not have to look at a clock.
If you're sitting, let the chair do the work of holding you upright. This assumes you have already tried the obvious things. No preamble. We start with the body.
1 Before you start
- Decide what counts as done for this block. "Two pages" is better than "make progress".
- Choose one question to answer in this block, rather than a whole subject to cover.
- Write down the one thing you are going to do, in a single sentence, before you start.
- Lower the bar until starting feels almost silly, then start.
- Decide now what you will do when the timer ends. Otherwise the decision will eat the first five minutes.
2 While the timer runs
- When you finish a piece, pause for three seconds before starting the next. It keeps the pace honest.
- When you notice you have drifted, do not restart the block. Just come back and carry on counting from where the timer is.
- Notice the moment your hand moves toward your phone. That moment is the whole skill.
- If your attention keeps sliding, shorten the next block rather than abandoning this one.
3 When it ends
- Take the break away from the screen, even if it is just the other side of the room.
- Resist the urge to review the work straight away. Come back to it later with fresh eyes.
- Put the notes you made where you will find them next time.
4What to put on
café murmur — The blur of other people talking, with none of the words close enough to follow. Some people concentrate better with a low level of company.
This page is a tool, not a course. Nothing is tracked, nothing is saved, and nobody is told whether you finished.
If this block does not fit, try 25-minute focus session for applications and forms with white noise, before something difficult, Deep work timer: 25 minutes of applications and forms (distant traffic), before you go back to something hard or 50-minute focus block for data work — white noise, when you need something unremarkable.