Focus session for exam revision: 50 minutes, forest at dusk, when you are cold and want to be warm

1 Before you start

• Close the door, or put headphones on, whichever signals "working" to the people around you.
• Tell yourself the goal is time spent, not output produced.
• Go to the toilet first. It sounds trivial until you are mid-sentence.
• If your mind is already racing, write down the three loudest thoughts before you begin.
• Write down the one thing you are going to do, in a single sentence, before you start.

2 While the timer runs

• If your attention keeps sliding, shorten the next block rather than abandoning this one.
• When you notice you have drifted, do not restart the block. Just come back and carry on counting from where the timer is.
• If you start tidying your desk, that is avoidance. Sit back down.
• The first urge to stop usually arrives early. Sit through it once and the second one is quieter.

3 When it ends

• Take the break away from the screen, even if it is just the other side of the room.
• Look out of a window for thirty seconds. Your eyes have been at one distance for a while.
• Say the session is finished, out loud if you can. It marks the boundary.

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.