How to use the online timer
Ninety minutes is about as long as most people can hold genuinely demanding concentration in one go, and it is no accident that the figure keeps appearing in research on musicians, chess players and writers. It is long enough to get past the shallow layer of a hard problem and reach the part where the work becomes interesting, and short enough that the end is in sight when it stops being enjoyable somewhere around the hour mark.
A block this long only survives if it is defended in advance. That means the calendar blocked, notifications off across every device rather than most of them, the phone in a drawer, and colleagues told that the next ninety minutes are spoken for. In an open-plan office, headphones are a visible signal even when nothing is playing through them. Interruption is the enemy rather than tiredness, since a two-minute question can cost fifteen minutes of reassembly.
Most people manage one or two of these in a day and no more, so putting the first one in the morning, before the inbox has established what the day is about, protects it most reliably. Afterwards, take a proper break away from the screen: another ninety-minute block started immediately usually delivers half as much and makes the afternoon worse.
Common questions
Why ninety minutes rather than a whole morning?
Because it is about as long as most people can hold genuinely demanding concentration in one go. Beyond that the quality drops, and a second block started immediately usually delivers half as much.
How do I protect a block that long in an office?
Block the calendar, silence notifications on every device, put the phone out of reach and tell people. A two-minute interruption can cost fifteen minutes of reassembling where you were.
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