Focus session · reading · 50 min

50-minute reading session with a train carriage and a timer, when you are too tired to try hard

Sit down, press start, and read properly for 50 minutes. Fifty minutes, the length of a therapy hour, with ten minutes off afterwards.

50:00

Press start. The timer keeps time so you do not have to look at a clock.

Start by hearing the furthest sound you can find. Too tired to try hard is exactly the right amount of tired for this. We'll go through it in order, without much decoration.

1 Before you start

Decide now what you will do when the timer ends. Otherwise the decision will eat the first five minutes.
Remind yourself that you are allowed to produce something mediocre in the first pass.
Go to the toilet first. It sounds trivial until you are mid-sentence.
Let go of the version of this task you imagined doing perfectly.
Dim the screen slightly. Bright screens make long sessions harder than they need to be.

2 While the timer runs

If you are stuck, say the problem out loud. It changes what you can see.
If you are suddenly sleepy, stand up for ten seconds and sit back down.
Notice the moment your hand moves toward your phone. That moment is the whole skill.
When you get an idea for something else, park it. Do not follow it.

3 When it ends

Look out of a window for thirty seconds. Your eyes have been at one distance for a while.
Decide whether the next block is the same task or a different one. Do not drift into it.
Leave the file open if you are coming back. Closing it makes restarting harder.

4What to put on

a train carriage — Rhythmic, low, and slightly rumbly. Many people find the motion-and-noise combination easier to work to than silence.

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 A 45-minute block for data work, with distant thunder, when you need to stop thinking about work, 50-minute focus block for data work — white noise, when you need something unremarkable or A 90-minute block for drawing, with a train carriage, when your attention is scattered.