The Practice

Before your main task today, spend five minutes subtracting rather than adding — close tabs, clear the desk surface, silence the watch, put one object in your eyeline that means 'this is the work.' Then begin without music if the work is verbal, or with one steady track on loop if it is not. Watch your breathing in the first ten minutes; shallow and high means you are bracing, so exhale long and let the shoulders fall. You do not need more willpower. You need fewer open doors.