A 45-minute block for data work, with forest at dusk, when you have woken up too early

1 Before you start

• Have a piece of paper beside you for the thoughts that will try to interrupt.
• Decide in advance that a bad sentence is still progress.
• Take one slow breath before you press start, so the session has a beginning.
• Tell yourself the goal is time spent, not output produced.
• Dim the screen slightly. Bright screens make long sessions harder than they need to be.

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.
• Notice whether you are working or performing work. They look similar from the outside.
• Notice the moment your hand moves toward your phone. That moment is the whole skill.
• When you have drifted for the fifth time, that is still four returns. Keep going.

3 When it ends

• Note what you actually got done, not what you meant to get done.
• Write down the question you could not answer, so it has somewhere to live.
• Decide whether the next block is the same task or a different one. Do not drift into it.

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.