Sorry for the delay, but an unexpected New Year's Day party went unexpectedly long, and I was too tired to write an entry. Here it is, a day late.
1. Staring at the second hand of a clock. I learned this technique from item 12 in [
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/08/08/12-concentration-exercises-from-1918/]. Many of the exercises are not too useful to me since I have Tourette's Syndrome, but I do find this exercise useful for grounding myself. My preferred clock software programs for this exercise are the clock widget in Windows 7 and the "radium" theme of Cairo-Clock (available in Debian [
https://www.debian.net/]).
2. Decluttering my pockets. Being a bit of a gamer, I would often carry dice [www.chessex.com] and a solitaire adventure book [
http://flyingbuffalo.com/solo.htm] (Amulet of the Salkti & Arena of Khazan). However, I was worried about losing the dice and damaging the book. Leaving them behind immediately reduced my stress, and carrying them again brought the worry back shortly thereafter.
3. Copywork. [
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/03/26/want-to-become-a-better-writer-copy-the-work-of-others/] I didn't this overly useful, but I mention it for completeness. I will post the text I copied in a separate article.
4. Caffeine. I want to get off the stuff, but I focus a lot better when I consume a lot of it.
5. Pieces of paper sized 3.5"x2.25". This is the size of a playing card. Not really a time management technique, but you can fit a surprising amount of scratch work on one.
