Focus session for drawing: 50 minutes, white noise, when the house is busy

1 Before you start

• Make sure your chair is at a height where your feet are flat on the floor.
• Accept that the first five minutes will feel like wading. Wading counts.
• Decide what counts as done for this block. "Two pages" is better than "make progress".
• Plan to leave the last two minutes for writing down where to pick up next time.
• Close the door, or put headphones on, whichever signals "working" to the people around you.

2 While the timer runs

• If you are stuck, say the problem out loud. It changes what you can see.
• If a thought will not leave, give it one line on the page and return to the task.
• When you get an idea for something else, park it. Do not follow it.
• If you are bored, the boredom is usually the last thing before something clicks.

3 When it ends

• Leave the file open if you are coming back. Closing it makes restarting harder.
• If it went badly, note one thing that worked anyway. There is usually one.
• Do not immediately open the thing you were avoiding. Give the block a proper end.

4What to put on

white noise — Flat across all frequencies and very effective at covering speech. Some people find it harsh after an hour; keep the volume low.