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Focus session · brainstorming · 90 min

Focus session for brainstorming: 90 minutes, birds at dawn, if you have five quiet minutes

90 minutes of brainstorming, with birds at dawn and a note on what to do when you drift.

90:00

Press start. The timer keeps time so you do not have to look at a clock.

Find one place in your body that already feels fine. Use that as the starting point. Five quiet minutes is enough. Ten is generous. No preamble. We start with the body.

1 Before you start

  • Go to the toilet first. It sounds trivial until you are mid-sentence.
  • If you are dreading it, make the first action physical: open the file, sharpen the pencil.
  • Write down the one thing you are going to do, in a single sentence, before you start.
  • Decide in advance that a bad sentence is still progress.
  • Set the timer where you can see it, or where you can deliberately not see it.

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.
  • If the task suddenly feels impossible, make it smaller rather than stopping. One paragraph. One function. One row.

3 When it ends

  • Take the break away from the screen, even if it is just the other side of the room.
  • Stand up and move for at least two minutes. The break is part of the method, not a reward.
  • Write one line about where to start next time. Future you will be grateful.

4What to put on

birds at dawn — Bright but not sharp. Better for early sessions than for late ones.

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 90-minute focus session for reading with café murmur, when nothing else has worked today, 90-minute focus block for portfolio work — white noise, when you have already had a long week or Deep work timer: 90 minutes of data work (plain quiet), if you are doing this instead of scrolling.