A 45-minute block for writing, with brown noise, when you need something unremarkable

1 Before you start

• Get water now, so you do not have to get up in fifteen minutes.
• Choose one question to answer in this block, rather than a whole subject to cover.
• Make sure your chair is at a height where your feet are flat on the floor.
• Tell yourself the goal is time spent, not output produced.
• Go to the toilet first. It sounds trivial until you are mid-sentence.

2 While the timer runs

• If you are bored, the boredom is usually the last thing before something clicks.
• If you start tidying your desk, that is avoidance. Sit back down.
• If you are suddenly sleepy, stand up for ten seconds and sit back down.
• 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.
• Write down the question you could not answer, so it has somewhere to live.
• Do not immediately open the thing you were avoiding. Give the block a proper end.

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.