90-minute focus block for reading — brown noise, before something difficult

1 Before you start

• Put your phone in another room, or in a drawer you cannot reach without standing up.
• Plan to leave the last two minutes for writing down where to pick up next time.
• Go to the toilet first. It sounds trivial until you are mid-sentence.
• Decide in advance that a bad sentence is still progress.
• Have a piece of paper beside you for the thoughts that will try to interrupt.

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 have drifted for the fifth time, that is still four returns. Keep going.
• When you get an idea for something else, park it. Do not follow it.
• Notice whether you are working or performing work. They look similar from the outside.

3 When it ends

• Decide whether the next block is the same task or a different one. Do not drift into it.
• Write down the question you could not answer, so it has somewhere to live.
• Say the session is finished, out loud if you can. It marks the boundary.

4What to put on

brown noise — Lower and softer than white noise, closer to a waterfall heard from a distance. Good if white noise feels too hissy.