90-minute focus session for thesis writing with forest at dusk, on a day that started badly

1 Before you start

• Have a piece of paper beside you for the thoughts that will try to interrupt.
• Give yourself permission to stop when the timer ends, even mid-sentence.
• Dim the screen slightly. Bright screens make long sessions harder than they need to be.
• Plan to leave the last two minutes for writing down where to pick up next time.
• Write down the one thing you are going to do, in a single sentence, before you start.

2 While the timer runs

• When you have drifted for the fifth time, that is still four returns. Keep going.
• When you notice you have drifted, do not restart the block. Just come back and carry on counting from where the timer is.
• If nothing is working, write badly on purpose for two minutes.
• When you catch yourself re-reading the same sentence, stop and write down what you were looking for.

3 When it ends

• Look out of a window for thirty seconds. Your eyes have been at one distance for a while.
• Write one line about where to start next time. Future you will be grateful.
• Write down the question you could not answer, so it has somewhere to live.

4What to put on

forest at dusk — Birds settling, leaves moving, nothing sudden. It works because it sounds like a place you can safely ignore.