Deep work timer

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How to use the online timer

Ninety minutes is roughly the longest block of concentrated work most people can sustain before quality drops off, and it is long enough for the kind of task that needs everything loaded into your head first. Writing, analysis, design, difficult code: work where the first twenty minutes are spent getting back to where you were and the value appears in the last thirty.

Protect it properly or it will not happen. Notifications off, phone in another room, calendar blocked, and one task decided before starting. An early start does most of the work here, since a block that begins at seven finishes before the first meeting exists. Keep this page open for the whole ninety minutes — the count belongs to the tab and ends with it.

One of these a day is a realistic aim and two is exceptional. If interruptions repeatedly break the block, the honest response is to shorten it rather than to keep failing at ninety minutes, because a completed sixty-minute block is worth more than a fragmented long one. Note down what got done; over a fortnight the record is more persuasive than any theory.

Common questions

How many of these blocks can I expect in a day?

One is realistic and two is exceptional. Concentration of this kind is genuinely limited, and treating a single completed block as a good day is more useful than planning for four.

What if interruptions keep breaking it?

Shorten the block rather than repeatedly failing at ninety minutes. A finished sixty-minute block is worth more than a fragmented long one, and an earlier start avoids most interruptions entirely.