Trying Out That Loic Pora Thing
So, someone asked me about ‘loic pora’ the other day. Funny story how I even bumped into that name. It wasn’t in some fancy productivity book or anything. Nah, it was way back, maybe like five, six years ago? I was going through a rough patch, you know? Felt like my brain was fried, jumping between tasks, getting nothing really done. Classic burnout starting, I guess.
Anyway, I was digging through some really old forum archives, like, digital archaeology stuff. Looking for something completely different, can’t even remember what now. And there it was, buried in a thread from the early 2000s. Just a mention: “Tried the loic pora method for deep work.” No explanation, nothing. Just that sentence.
Getting Started, Sort Of
Curiosity got the better of me. What the heck was ‘loic pora’? Couldn’t find much. Bits and pieces here and there, mostly vague. Sounded like some kind of intense focus thing, maybe involving specific timing, maybe isolation? The descriptions were all over the place. So, I decided to just… try my own version based on the scraps I found.
Here’s what I did:
- Picked one single task for the morning. Just one.
- Turned off everything. Phone in another room, email closed, notifications silenced. Like, digital hermit mode.
- Set a timer for, I don’t know, 75 minutes? Seemed random enough. The ‘pora’ part sounded like ‘portion’ or something.
- Worked only on that task. If my mind wandered, I had to gently bring it back. No checking anything else.
- After the timer, took a mandatory break. Like, get up, walk around, stare out the window. Not check the phone! That was key.
The Messy Middle
Sounds simple, right? Wrong. First few times were a disaster. My brain was screaming for distraction. Felt like sitting still was torture. The 75 minutes felt like 75 years. I kept thinking, “Is this even working? Am I just wasting time trying to focus?” The lack of clear rules was also frustrating. Was it 75 minutes? 90? Did the break have to be 15 minutes or 30? Who is Loic anyway? Probably just some random dude.
I messed around with the timings. Tried 60 minutes, then 90. Tried different break lengths. Some days it clicked, felt like I got into a real groove. Other days, I’d just end up staring at the screen, feeling more stressed than focused. It wasn’t some magic bullet. More like wrestling a slippery fish.
So, What Happened?
Did I stick with ‘loic pora’? Not really, not by that name anyway. It was too vague, too undefined. But the process of trying it taught me something. It forced me to confront my own distraction habits. The core idea – single-tasking, dedicated time blocks, real breaks – that stuff actually worked, once I stopped worrying about whether I was doing ‘loic pora’ correctly and just adapted it.
So yeah, my ‘loic pora’ journey was messy. It wasn’t about finding a perfect system. It was about the struggle, the trial and error. Ended up cobbling together my own focus routine from the wreckage. It works for me now, most days. Don’t call it loic pora though. Just call it ‘trying not to lose my mind’. That’s the real practice, isn’t it?
