Focus session · exam revision · 50 min
50-minute focus session for exam revision with café murmur, when you are doing this for the first time
50 minutes on exam revision — recall rather than re-reading. 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.
Notice whether you're leaning forward. Most people are, slightly, all day. If this is your first go, stay with the plainest version of the instructions. We'll go through it in order, without much decoration.
1 Before you start
- Turn off notifications for the next block, not just to silent.
- Decide in advance that a bad sentence is still progress.
- Decide now what you will do when the timer ends. Otherwise the decision will eat the first five minutes.
- Decide that today's session does not have to be good. It has to happen.
- Write down the one thing you are going to do, in a single sentence, before you start.
2 While the timer runs
- If you start tidying your desk, that is avoidance. Sit back down.
- If the task suddenly feels impossible, make it smaller rather than stopping. One paragraph. One function. One row.
- If a thought will not leave, give it one line on the page and return to the task.
- When you catch yourself re-reading the same sentence, stop and write down what you were looking for.
3 When it ends
- Leave the desk tidier than you found it. Two minutes now saves ten later.
- Say the session is finished, out loud if you can. It marks the boundary.
- Have a drink of water before you check anything.
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 Focus session for writing: 90 minutes, distant thunder, when you are not in the mood, Deep work timer: 25 minutes of problem solving (a fan or air conditioner), when you cannot concentrate on anything else or 50-minute focus block for applications and forms — a library, when you are waiting for something.