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Focus session · coding · 90 min

90-minute focus session for coding with brown noise, if you are sceptical about all of this

90 minutes on coding — one function at a time, not the whole system. One full ultradian cycle, for work that needs a long runway.

90:00

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. Scepticism is welcome. You do not have to believe anything for this to work. This works better when you don't overthink it.

1 Before you start

  • Take one slow breath before you press start, so the session has a beginning.
  • Plan to leave the last two minutes for writing down where to pick up next time.
  • Put your phone in another room, or in a drawer you cannot reach without standing up.
  • If you are dreading it, make the first action physical: open the file, sharpen the pencil.
  • Put the thing you keep reaching for out of arm's reach.

2 While the timer runs

  • If you feel restless, change your posture rather than your task.
  • It is fine to stare at the wall for a minute. That is often where the answer is.
  • If a thought will not leave, give it one line on the page and return to the task.
  • If you are bored, the boredom is usually the last thing before something clicks.

3 When it ends

  • Say the session is finished, out loud if you can. It marks the boundary.
  • Look out of a window for thirty seconds. Your eyes have been at one distance for a while.
  • Leave the file open if you are coming back. Closing it makes restarting harder.

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.

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 90-minute block for editing, with a stream, when you have been on screens all day, A 45-minute block for decluttering, with birds at dawn, when nothing else has worked today or 25-minute focus session for admin and email with rain on a window, after eating too much.