Rant: got 4 hours of deep work in one day with a $9 kitchen timer, now I can't decide if the timer or the phone ban did it

Viola Chen · 2026-10-20T18:55:03.6017+00:00

Two weeks ago I had the best focus day of the whole month, 4 hours of real work before lunch, which never happens. The setup was simple: phone face down in a drawer in the other room, kitchen timer from the dollar store set to 45 minutes, and a paper list with only 3 tasks on it. Problem is I changed two things at once, so now I can't tell which one mattered. This week I tried the timer alone with my phone on the desk and got maybe 90 minutes of real work before I fell into a news rabbit hole. So my question is for people who have tried both: does the timer break the spell, or is it the phone being in another room? I want to know which one to keep before I start telling my brother it works.

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Rant: got 4 hours of deep work in one day with a $9 kitchen timer, now I can't decide if the timer or the phone ban did it | Block It Out - The Community Guide