Focus & Productivity Glossary

Work for 52 minutes, then take a full 17-minute break.

The lingering part of your attention that stays stuck on a previous task after you switch.

Working alongside another person — in a room or on a call — to make starting and staying on task easier.

The amount of mental effort your working memory is carrying at a given moment.

The hidden cost of jumping between unrelated tasks, which fragments attention and slows you down.

The idea that the quality of decisions declines after a long run of making them.

Distraction-free concentration on a demanding task, pushing your abilities toward their limit.

Focused, effortful practice aimed at improving specific weaknesses, with feedback.

Using technology intentionally — keeping the few tools that serve you and cutting the rest.

Do your most important, most dreaded task first thing in the day.

A simple grid that sorts tasks by urgency and importance to decide what to do, defer, delegate or drop.

Complete absorption in a task, where focus feels effortless and time seems to fall away.

Working on one task until your focus naturally fades, then taking a break proportional to the session.

Attaching a new habit to one you already do: "After I pour my coffee, I will start a focus block."

An intense, absorbed state of concentration in which time and surroundings fade out — sometimes for hours.

Plans in the form "when X happens, I will do Y" that make follow-through much more likely.

Organising time in long, uninterrupted blocks for creative and technical work, as opposed to hourly meetings.

A stretch of radically reduced inputs and obligations, devoted almost entirely to focused work.

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

A method that breaks work into timed intervals — classically 25 minutes — separated by short breaks.

Low-concentration, logistical tasks that keep you busy but create little lasting value.

Deliberately doing one thing at a time, with full attention, until it reaches a stopping point.

Grouping similar tasks and doing them together to reduce the cost of switching.

The ability to begin a task when you intend to — the step most procrastination is really about.

Difficulty sensing how much time has passed or how long something will take — time feels like "now" or "not now".

Assigning every part of your day to a specific block on the calendar in advance.

Giving a task a fixed maximum amount of time, then stopping when the box is up.

A short, repeatable routine that bridges the switch from one task or mode to the next.

If a task takes less than two minutes, do it now — or shrink a new habit down to a two-minute version.

The body's roughly 90-minute cycles of higher and lower energy across the day.

Being unable to start anything meaningful before an upcoming appointment, so the time beforehand is lost.

The tendency for unfinished tasks to stay on your mind more than finished ones.