Deep work
My honest maximum is about 40 minutes of real focus. Not the two-hour monk sessions from productivity books. Forty minutes, then my brain wants a coffee and a look out the window.
So I stopped planning around a number on a clock. I just start one.
Start the clock, not the plan
Section titled “Start the clock, not the plan”I use Flow mode almost all the time. It counts up, so I don’t have to decide upfront whether this is a 25-minute thing or a 50-minute thing. I start and work, and when I’m done I stop.
- Pick the task. Usually it’s today’s toad, the one I’d rather avoid.
- Pick an activity. Work for most things, or your own.
- Hit Start.
Fastest way: tap ▶ on the task card. Or long-press the app icon › Start flow (iOS) or Start pomodoro (Android), and pause or stop from the lock screen later. More in Daily planning.
Fastest way: tap ▶ on the task card. Or long-press the app icon › Start flow (iOS) or Start pomodoro (Android), and pause or stop from the lock screen later. More in Daily planning.
Click ▶ on any task card, or Ctrl+S on the Timer page.
When I stop, Flow gives me a break that matches the work: 5:1 by default, so 40 minutes earns 8. I take it. Skipping breaks is how 40 minutes of focus turns into 90 minutes of staring at the same function.
Pause or stop?
Section titled “Pause or stop?”Something always interrupts. My rule is simple:
- About a minute (a question, the doorbell): Pause, deal with it, Resume.
- Clearly longer: Stop. Then take the break, because I’m already out of the zone anyway.
- “Just a minute” that wasn’t: I come back to the paused screen, see it’s been 15 minutes, and stop it there. No guilt. The session up to the pause still counts.
Sessions shorter than 3 minutes in Flow aren’t saved, so a false start doesn’t pollute your stats.
Meetings count too
Section titled “Meetings count too”I start Flow with the Meeting activity when a call or huddle starts and stop it when it ends. It isn’t deep work, and that’s the point. At the end of the week Statistics › By activity shows how much of my “work day” was actually meetings. The number is usually rude.
Log what wasn’t planned
Section titled “Log what wasn’t planned”The timer covers planned work. A lot of the day isn’t planned: leaving home for an errand, someone asking a question I couldn’t answer so I had to dig into it for half an hour.
That’s what Log notes are for. One line, time defaults to now:
- “Out for the parcel”
- “Researched X for Anna, didn’t know the answer”
At the end of the day the Log shows sessions, notes and finished tasks on one timeline. Then “why did I only get two sessions done today?” has an answer, and it’s usually not laziness.
Once a week
Section titled “Once a week”Open Statistics and check Time of day. If your focus clusters at 9–11, put the hard stuff there and the meetings somewhere else. If you can, anyway.
Forty honest minutes beat two hours of pretending.