Productivity | Best Results Organizing

How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 4: Digital Timers

Posted on: April 28th, 2025 by Julie Bestry | 8 Comments

In the past three weeks, we’ve explored using timers to enhance focus, reduce hyper-focus, and get stuff done.

After establishing why (and in what situations) timers can boost productivity, we identified the general characteristics of a good timer and the customizable aspects supporting individuals in their unique tasks and projects.

Last week, we examined a wide variety of tangible timers, particularly those (like Time Timer and the Focus Timer® Visual Timer) that allow users to both see the passage of time (particularly with the benefit of showing analog time), and feel like they have some tactile control over manipulating time.

While children, people with ADHD and executive function disorders, and anyone who has difficulty identifying and recognizing time as it passes can benefit from those tangible timers, not everyone needs a physical timer, and while we can all benefit from seeing analog time, it’s not always essential for all.

If what you most need is to have a trusted alert so that you do not overrun your allotted time, digital timers will suffice, but they range from ultra-basic to fancy-schmancy.

DIGITAL TIMERS YOU ALREADY OWN

In the second post in this series, we looked at a long sequence of features that make a good timer, both for the project and the user. You may wish to review those concepts, but in general, you want a timer that is:

simple to use
does more than what you’re already able to do with your resources
integrates, if applicable, with the tools you already have
process-agnostic, so that you don’t have to use only fixed-durations that aren’t useful for your needs (in case you prefer the 52/17 technique to a standard 25/5 Pomodoro and break, for example)
aesthetically pleasing, visually (if that matters to you)
customizable for features such as volume and type of audio alert
frictionless, because every obstacle to using a timer is an obstacle to your focus

Kitchens stoves have built-in timers, but if you’re in your back yard doing some weeding, at the coffee shop finishing up a presentation, conducting a meeting at the office (or online), taking a nap in your dorm room (or the comfy chairs at the library), or doing anything anyplace that is not your kitchen, you’ll need to possess some kind of timer more sophisticated than asking a patient friend to count one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi for minutes or hours on end and then shouting your name!

Your Built-In Device Timer

The fastest and simplest timer method is to use the one built into your phone. However, I’ve been surprised by how many people don’t know how to use their phone timers or at least all of the features available.

On iOS devices like iPhones or iPads, just open the Clock app on your home screen.

Tap Timers, generally on the bottom of the Clock app interface.
Hit the + sign to add a new timer.
Set the duration by turning the number dials: a 25-minute Pomodoro to get work done, 14 minutes to cook your salmon, 38 minutes until you should check your laundry. Adjust the hours, minutes, and seconds as needed.
Add a label if you tend to forget what the timer was for. This is helpful if you’re setting multiple timers to get all of the items you’re cooking for Thanksgiving dinner on the table simultaneously; one timer tells you when to baste the turkey, another to reheat the potatoes, and so on. If you’re apt to hyper-focus, labeling the timer PICK UP CHILDREN!!! may give you the boost you need not to snooze or ignore your timer.
Add a song or sound to play when your time is up if pre-set alerts are too jangly for you. You might want a lilting tone to lift you gently out of hyper-focus or an energetic song to help you transition from your break to the next task.
Tap Start. The timer will begin counting down. You can now look away and ignore it.
If you need to pause the timer, because of an interruption, hit the pause icon (universally known among seniors as “the eleven”) and resume (by hitting the “play” triangle) when you’re ready.

When your time is up, the phone will send you a notification, even if you’re in another app.

You may notice that you have other timers in a “Recent” list. If you tend to use an official 25-minute Pomodoro and 5-minute break often, go ahead and create labels for them and keep them in your list; add and label any other frequently-used timers to save you time and effort the next time you want to quickly assign yourself a stop time.

If you want to quickly set a timer on your iPhone and you don’t mind setting it for multiples of 5-minute increments, head to the Control Center:

Alternatively, you can shout, “Hey, Siri, set a timer for 25 minutes” across the office to set a Pomodoro without the temptations inherent in holding a phone in your hand.

Your digital assistant is particularly useful in the kitchen if your hands are wet or you want to avoid touching your phone while cooking. If what’s in the oven isn’t quite ready, asking Siri to set the timer means I don’t have to hover or worry that if I turn to wash some dishes, I could completely forget that three minutes have passed.

Android devices operate much the same way, via the Clock app and using the Timer option. Android users generally set timer durations from a number pad (akin to making a call or using the calculator) rather than a dial, but set customized labels and adjust sounds as with iOS.

Android has the same pause/resume/cancel functions and you can keep multiple timers running concurrently.

You can use your Google Assistant by saying, “Hey Google, set a timer for 15 minutes.” Just be sure to enunciate a little better than than this internet sensation.

The main advantage of using your built-in device timer is that it’s easy-peasy lemon squeezy. Take ten seconds to set a timer by tapping or talking and you’re ready to get started. The obstacles are few and the countdown is simple.

The drawback of using your phone or device as a timer is that it presents an opportunity for distraction when you are setting the timers and again when you reach for the phone to stop the timer alert. If you experience phone addiction, you may wish to read:

DEDICATED DIGITAL TIMERS FOR FOCUS AND PRODUCTIVITY

The next step up from your kitchen or built-in phone timer is a mobile app, desktop app, or browser-based app, and there are numerous options available. Few have any great functional advantages over the others, so it’s often a matter of picking which aesthetic or bonus features you prefer. Most will be marketed as Pomodoro timers, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be limited to 25 minute increments; it’s just branding.

Browser Based Timers

If you’ve got a phone, tablet, or computer, you’ve got an internet browser. Using a web-based timer in your browser means you don’t have to download anything. It’s best for when you are having trouble focusing, want a timer, but know that searching for an app to download will keep you from getting started. Wherever you are, even on a borrowed computer or in the public library, there’s a browser timer for you.

Pomodor

Pomodor is web-based. Just bring up the website and it’s already ready for you tap the play button to start your first (of up to four) Pomodoro timers. While the default is set for 25 minutes Pomodoros with 5-minute breaks, you can can adjust multiple aspects, including:

- - work duration from 5-60 minutes
  - short break duration for 1-5 minutes
  - long break duration of 1-45 minutes (after four Pomodoro/short break cycles)
  - how many rounds (or cycles) you want to do, from 1 to 15
  - which of eight alert noises you prefer (all sounding very “iPhone circa 2009”)

There’s also a dark mode option, which I’ve employed, below.

Pomodor is free. While you can create an account to preserve your settings or access your stats overview with charts to visualize which days of the week you were the most productive, it’s not required.

Pomodor’s few customizations means you won’t spend a lot of time futzing with the settings and can (or at least should) get right to work.

Focus Keeper

Focus Keeper is another free and easy-to-intuit web-based timer. Create an account with your email and a password, or Google or Apple ID, and when you log in you can create pre-set timers with labels for various types of activities (reading? meditation? blog writing?) and even have a daily schedule for time-blocked work.

When you’re logged in, just select or create a timer you wish to start, click “play” and start working; you can track your focus by the day, by times of the day, and by focused task-type.

If you don’t want to log in, just start with the default settings: a 25 minute focus setting, a 5 minute break setting, a 30-minute long break between cycles of four sessions and breaks. Turn the ticking (so much ticking!) on or off, and pause if necessary, but otherwise, as you get to work, the soothing “waves” at the bottom of the screen gets higher.

Focus Keeper is available on the web, as well as in iOS and Android versions.

Pomofocus

Pomofocus is another web-based timer that lets you access basic aspects for free. Without signing in, you can set the focus, short break, and long break timers, name the focus task, and select the number of Pomodoros and breaks — which need not be strict 25-minute Pomodoros — I set this up for a 52/17 round; you can also set the number of cycles before a long break.

You can also adjust the volume of the alert and the type of alert sound.

If you create an account and log in, you can use templates, access a summary detailing the number of hours you spent focused, the number of days you used Pomofocus, and how many days of a streak you amassed. (If you’re competitive, you can see how you rank against other Pomofocus users.)

Pomofocus is free, but the ad-free Premium plan gives you lets you add more projects and templates, view a yearly report, download reports, import tasks from Todoist, and connect to other apps. The Premium plan is $3/month, $18/year, or $54 for a lifetime plan.

Deep Work Depot — Want to focus on your deep work in the most bare bones way? Based on Cal Newport’s concept described in his book Deep Work, this timer emphasizes focusing without distraction on tasks that are cognitively demanding.

There are no bells, no whistles, and hardly any color or design. Set your focus and rest timer durations; turn the “Lo-Fi” music on or off.

(Lo-Fi, my aging GenX self has learned, refers to low-fidelity, a musical style that intentionally incorporates imperfections and a relaxed aesthetic. Now that I’ve experienced it with three different timers, I must admit it sounds like elevator music to me.)

(Note: I’ve yet to figure out what Xmas mode does. The toggle turns green, but otherwise? Nada)

Similar to web-based timer apps, you may also want to explore browser-extension options, like:

Marinara: Pomodoro® Assistant is a Chrome extension — Marinara creates a toolbar icon for the countdown timer. You can configure preferred work session times, and it offers both short breaks for between sessions and (configurable) longer intervals between cycles. There are 20+ audio alerts, and you can add ticking sounds if that’s your jam. Track your stats and history to gauge when you have been the most productive. You can also set automatic timers. It’s free.
Momentum Dash is another Chrome extension — It combines a beautiful nature photo and motivational quote with a countdown timer, all on your browser’s “new tab” page. Set up your tasks, create different timer modes, add mantras, customize sounds, and show the number of days counting down to a deadline. The Plus version is $3.33/month and includes Spotify and YouTube sound integration, task app integrations, site blockers and more.

Otto is yet another Chrome extension. — The free “core” features include unlimited Pomodoros, the ability to block an unlimited number of distracting websites, and the option to create 3 tasks, each up to 15 minutes in length. For real power, the Pro level (at $24/year for $59 for lifetime use) offers an unlimited number of tasks up to 60 minutes in length and other up-leveled features.

Integrated Timer Apps

Some timer apps and programs can integrate with software you’re already using. Note, timers at this level are less intuitive but do more heavy lifting than basic timers. If you are already using the software platforms with which these timers integrate, that goes in the win column, but if you aren’t already dependent on the multi-featured software programs, it’s oversell.

FocusMode by Geekbot integrates with Slack, so whether you’re doing the corporate thing or are living the start-up dream inside your Slack channels, FocusMode can help you stay the course. Tell FocusMode what you’ll be working on and for how long; as the timer (silently) ticks down, all your notifications will be automatically switched off and Do Not Disturb will be activated. FocusMode is free.
Pomodoro Tracker is similar to FocusMode and is designed to help you track your Pomodoro efforts while integrating with Slack. (But I think they missed an opportunity to call it Pomodoro Slacker.)
Pomello is for followers of both Pomodoro and Kanban, as it integrates with Trello. The basic version is free, while the Pro version is $20/year and offers custom sounds, the ability to export your data, and lets you view Trello checklist items as focus tasks.

Timer Apps and Programs

Session

Session for MacOS and iOS for iPhone, iPad, and AppleWatch — For an Apple lover like myself, I’m intrigued that Session boasts so many features, even if it’s kind of kooky to spend real money on a digital timer. True, it’s not just a timer (but remember what I’ve said about not acquiring features you don’t already need!)

Session syncs across Apple devices, integrates with your calendar, lets you customize work and break timer lengths, offers a Mac menu bar app (so it floats atop other windows), and has nifty keyboard shortcuts and a notes section so you don’t have to go searching for information.

You can also see detailed analytics of your focused work efforts — and to boost that focus, the Mac version will block apps and websites. And if co-workers are the reason you can’t get work done? It integrates with Slack! Set a custom status when you start focusing so they’ll leave you alone. You can also have a visual as well as digital timer.

The free plan offers a unlimited basic Pomodoro timers, analytic data from your past two days working, and the ability to view your calendar from inside Session, but the paid versions (Pro Monthly at $4.99/month or or Pro Yearly at $39.99/year) offer all the fancy features, customizations, app and website blocking, automations, and other goodies.

After you set your focus intention and timer, Sessions gives you a meditative breathing exercise to prepare you for work. Ommmmm.

Flow

Flow is a clean, basic Mac and iOS timer. — At the free level, you get an interval-based timer with multiple duration options for your work and breaks, as well as statistics and graphs (synced to your iCloud account) to give you insight into your focus and work habits.

If you upgrade to the Pro level, Flow additionally offers a timer sync, more customizable duration and session cycle settings, the ability to customize your session title, advanced session controls, app and web blocking, Apple Calendar sync, and the ability to export your timer data, all for $1.49/month.

Forest

Forest is a fun timer for iOS and Android users, and has a Chrome extension for those seeking an in-browser option — Forest uses playful gamification, knowing your seems-like-a-pipe-dream hope of not getting distracted may need more than a buzzer to achieve success. The iOS version is $3.99; currently the Andoird version is ad-supported.

When you’re ready to focus, you “plant” a cartoon tree. As you continue working, the timer counts down and the tree on your screen grows in front of you (to the sound of calming forest audio, if you like).

If you put yourself in Deep Focus Mode but then leave the app to do something else on your phone, your tree dies. (For Millennial readers who have just been reminded of your dearly departed Tamagotchis, I’m so sorry.)

With each focus session, you “complete” trees, and over the weeks and months using the app, you grow a forest. Yes, it’s cutesie, but Forest is not without serious analytics. Tag your focus sessions by categories, note trends, and can track when you’re most productive.

While Forest has charm, I imagine that if you’re tempted to watch your forest grow while you’re working rather than waiting until your rest break, your focus will suffer from distraction. But if you’ve got patience, you will be rewarded.

Bear Focus Timer

The Bear Focus Timer is silly. But sometimes we need something silly to keep us motivated, especially when we need longer breaks that we can take and more snacks than we have on hand. From the creator:

Tom is a friendly bear, except when you cannot concentrate. He will do his best to help you focus on something!

Just place your screen face down and focus on what you do.
A variety of white noise will help you focus more.
If you concentrate well, Tom will praise you.
You can change the session time in the settings.
You can reset the timer by pressing Tom’s belly button.

Please keep in mind that Tom can also enjoy fishing when you are focused.

Customize your focus time, short and long breaks, the number of sessions, and the audio accompaniment…and hang out with Tom, the bear.

This iOS-only app is $1.99 in the App Store.

Moosti

Moosti is a gorgeous and deceptively simple timer; it’s fully compatible with iOS, macOS, watchOS, and visionOS. In addition to the traditional timer options, it sets a whole atmosphere with beautiful visual environments and Lo-Fi soundscapes.

Moosti also offers breathing exercises and guided meditations to support focused work. Moosti is free, with in-app purchases.

The app stores are full of timer apps. If there’s an app that appeals to you (and costs nothing), experiment with it for at least a week; if it doesn’t float your boat, delete it before seeking a new timer.

Online Timers

LifeAt

My colleague Stephanie Denton has recommended LifeAt, a Pomodoro timer within an immersive experience for artificial accountability.

LifeAt blends a timer with virtual spaces, combining visual environments, ambiance, sounds, and musical integration.

The free 7-day trial includes 1,000+ focus video and image spaces, unlimited focus sounds & ambiance, online co-working communities, widgets (including task lists, a calendar, the Pomodoro timer, breathwork exercise, and more). The Pro version provides unlimited tasks and projects, a multi-calendar and task-to-calendar integration, and a daily planner. LifeAt Pro is $16/month, though when I signed up for the free account, it offered Pro at half off.

There are beautiful video landscapes, cozy fires, animated neighborhoods and more, so you have myriad options for finding your LifeAt “space” to set up your timer and features. My personal favorite is this window because, while I like looking at nature, I don’t even want to pretend to get too close.

If creating a new environment is part of your focus routine, you might want to check out Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek to see how you can incorporate timers and faux environments.

YouTube Channels with Timers

YouTube is awash with timer videos requiring no downloads or expense. (Most are designed for Pomodoros, so know that the time will not be customizable for your specific needs.)

Just use YouTube’s search bar for “focus timers” and “pomodoro” timers and you’ll get a variety of options like these, which will let you just jump in to a series of timed sessions. And yes, they all seem to be backed by Lo-Fi music. (Forewarned is forearmed, and wow, wouldn’t we be more productive if we had four arms!)

Believe it or not, this only touches on a small percentage of the more popular digital timers at your disposal. Next time, in the final installment of this series, we’ll finish up with hybrid timers that combine tangible, analog options with digital ones for special purposes. There will also be some special bonus material! Whoohoo!

Until then, which of these might you use or recommend to students, colleagues, or anyone else who faces focus obstacles? Would you grow a forest or press a bear’s belly button?

How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 3: Tangible Timers

Posted on: April 21st, 2025 by Julie Bestry | 10 Comments

So far in this series on using timers, we’ve focused on the “thinky” aspects.

In How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 1, we looked at the the why of using timers and all of the situations in which they can boost productivity.
Then, in How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 2: Picking a Good Timer we identified the general characteristics of a good timer and the specific, customizable aspects supporting individuals in their unique tasks and projects.

That was wordy stuff. Today, we get to start looking at the actual timers that can work their magic in helping you maintain focus, remember to take breaks, and avoid hyper-focusing. Today’s post is what I consider a “feast your eyes” post; read it in its entirety or just scroll through until you see a timer that appeals, and then explore all the salient details.

As we discussed previously, the timers you select should feel like they’re on your team, not like they’re monitoring you for a productivity parole board. They need to support all your functional, as well as aesthetic and emotional, needs. You don’t want — at least under most circumstances — to feel like you accidentally launched a countdown to self-destruction instead of a 25-minute Pomodoro focus session. Embrace a platform that works for you.

A timer should support your functional, as well as your aesthetic and emotional, needs. You don't want to feel like you accidentally launched a countdown to self-destruction instead of a 25-minute Pomodoro focus session. Embrace what… Share on X

Today, we’ll focus on physical (primarily analog) timers; next week, we’ll examine digital and hybrid timers. But to begin, we’ll delve into the product line that has done the most to improve the understanding of the passage of time in schools, within the ADHD community, and among anyone seeking productivity support.

DISK-Y BEHAVIOR: TIME TIMER, THE BIG KAHUNA OF PRODUCTIVITY TIMERS

If you read Paper Doll or any productivity or organizing blogs, you probably already know quite a bit about Time Timer. The basics of this beloved product invented by Jan Rogers in 1994 are told in this video.

The key is that Time Timer was the first solution to the problem of time blindness, an undeveloped sense of the passage of time. As explained in ADHD Minds Are Trapped in Now (& Other Time Management Truths) in ADDitude Magazine, those experiencing time blindness are so ensconced in the present moment, in the “now” of things, that recall of the past and anticipation (and planning for) the future are difficult. Understandably, time blindness creates trouble in estimating how long a task will take.

My professional organizing business started in 2002, when Time Timer was still getting to be well known, so I feel as though we’ve “grown up” together. While almost every professional organizer has familiarity with Time Timer, I knew they’d made the “Big Time” when I walked into a Diabetes Sisters support group meeting. The moderator was almost giddy as she showed off the “cool timer” for making sure we’d hit all the planned activities on time.

Seeing Time

Over the years, I’ve been impressed with how this simple innovation has helped children and adults “see” the passage of time in ways they’d never been able to before.

In part, it’s because younger millennials and Gen Z have experienced digital clocks almost entirely to the exclusion of analog clocks. It’s no wonder that young people don’t know what “half past” or “a quarter ’til” mean!

Digital clocks are on their devices and computers, in their classrooms, and on electronic signs as they drive down the street. If you blink, you miss the minutes changing on a digital clock, and there’s no second hand “sweeping away” the seconds, as my kindergarten teacher explained it.

For many others, whether because of ADHD, executive function disorders, or just the complexities of living in the 21st century, they’ve never quite gotten the hang of how time “feels,” so they underestimate or overestimate how long a minute (or twenty) might take. If you don’t know how long a minute is, how can you envision how many you need for any given task?

The basic element of all of the physical Time Timers is two-fold:

they display time in an analog manner
a colored disk is set to the starting point of the timed period, and the visible area of the colored disk disappears (behind the face of the timer — it’s mechanical, not actually magic!) as time is “used up.”

It seems almost too simple, but users soon see that making time visible in this way calms the nerves and soothes the senses. Whether you’re doing a timed practice test or trying to finish a presentation for your client, you need only flick your eyes to the Time Timer to know how much time you have left.

There’s no need to calculate the math in your head as with a digital clock, and even from a distance (and even if you’re extremely nearsighted!), the flash of color slowly moving in a clockwise pattern is enough to signal if you have a lot or a little time left.

In this way, Time Timer delivers on its mission: it “fosters focus and provides clarity to individuals who struggle with visualizing time.”

Original Time Timers

The Original 8″ and Original 12″ versions with the crisp white background, black type, and red disk are for purists (and anyone who wants a variation on the old joke, “What’s black and white and re(a)d all over?”).

Both sizes are 60-minute timers, good for keeping a typical work or community meeting running without unraveling. Its operations are silent; with no ticking, the Originals are ideal for classrooms, open-plan offices, and for sound-sensitive users or spaces. The alert ding at the end of the set time is optional.

The no-nonsense style makes it appropriate for classrooms or office work, and it has both a magnetic backing and foldable feet, so you can choose the optimum display style for your needs. You’ll need two AA batteries to keep your Original Time Timers in lock-step with you, but it comes with a dry erase activity card to keep you on-task.

Teachers and homeschooling parents may want to opt for the Time Timer® Original 8” Learning Center Classroom Sets, with sets of three Original 8″ timers in either primary or secondary colors.

With all the same features as the other Originals, they add a pop of color, so if the minimalistic look and magnetic backing or table-top options appeal to you for your workplace, but you need to make your stylistic mark, this might be a good alternative.

The colored Learning Center versions also prevent you from feeling like you’ve fallen into a creepy, crooked-clock episode of Severance.

You can also amplify the Original 8″ with a Time Timer® Original 8” Visual Scheduler. Encircling the timer is a dry-erase board where you can add calendar/daypart information or time progress details.

Actual minutes are hidden. In addition to the drawn-on markings you can add, there are clips that mark where you have reached in the time allotted.

In the reverse portion, there are pockets for holding the clips, dry erase markers and other timer accessories.

The Original Time Timers include access to the Time Timer apps, which we’ll review next time.

Time Timer Plus

In 2013, the line expanded to include Time Timer Plus, all of which stand upon their own and have handles to make them portable — as more than one client’s child has noticed, somewhat like a purse, or as my GenX clients have said, like a little boombox.

There are two versions of the 7.09″ x 1.7″ x 5.51″ Time Timer Plus 60-minute timers, with relatively serious faces (white backing/black type/red disk) like the Originals; the bodies come in either white or charcoal.

As with the originals, there’s no distracting ticking to interfere with focus, and there’s volume control for the alert, to assure that those who hyper-focus aren’t jarred into anxiety.

These were the first Time Timers I ever owned and used with clients. In addition to the features of the Original version, the timers in the Plus line are the only analog visual timer with a pause button (in the upper right).

The official rules of the Pomodoro Technique say that if your 25-minute Pomodoro is interrupted, you have to start counting from the beginning, but you’re a grownup and can make rules for yourself! If the interruption is worthy — your boss has a question, the school has a fire drill, etc. — hit that pause button, but do get back to what you were doing when you are able.

Over time, the company realized that different users might need different iterations. An hour is fairly long; five or ten minutes barely makes a dent. Thus, the colored part of the disk measuring just a handful of minutes would be hard to discern, especially for children or even someone learning to appreciate smaller increments of time, like while meditating or holding yoga positions. For them, 5-minute and 20-minute versions were created.

Conversely, sometimes an hour isn’t enough; if you’re taking timed practice tests or holding a multi-hour group workshop, a longer visual display of time is needed, so the Plus line added a 120-minute timer. All three additions to the Time Timer Plus family have more colorful disks.

Time Timer Mod

The Original and Plus editions always served their purposes, but (especially early on) had a decidedly academic/industrial look about them. Some people felt that it gave off either a juvenile or sterile vibe; some of my adult clients said they feared it branded them as someone who needed help with time. (But c’mon, we all need help with time.)

As I noted last week, aesthetics can matter, and while most people wouldn’t consider timers as bearing a stigma, both the Original and the Plus line are rather “in your face” about their purpose. The Time Timer Mod line was the perfect response.

These 3.47″ square timers are just two inches deep, so you can use them anywhere: at home, in an office, working from a coffee house or library, even at the beach. They are small enough to throw into a backpack or purse, and to the uninitiated, they just look like little clocks. And a Time Timer Mod only requires one AA battery.

The standard Time Timer Mod – Home Edition Timers can measure up to 60 minutes and come in six designer colors accent colors coordinating with the timer disks: Lakeday Blue, Fern Green, Dreamsicle Orange, Pale Shale Gray, Peony Pink, and Cottonball White (with a burgundy disk). (Value packs of coordinating silicone “skins” are optional.)

As some people (teenagers? college dudes? macho men in the workplace?) may want or need a timer with a harder-edged aesthetic to stay committed, Time Timer has a new Mod Home Metallic Edition in four different colors/styles that remind me of the eye shadow palettes popular in the 1980s:

Metallic Midnight (midnight blue timer with gold disks)
Metallic Indigo (dark purple-blue timer with a light purple disk)
Metallic Forest (dark green timer with a metallic brown disk)
Metallic Storm (dark blue timer with a pink frosted disk, the color of an eye shadow I suspect I currently own!)

(These are more sparkly in person than they appear on screen.)

And for parents of kids needing something a little more generous with time measurement, the cheery Time Timer® MOD Home Edition Rainbow Wheel colorfully communicates time segmentation to children in five minute increments.

While the Home Editions are equally useful at home or work, the 60-minute Time Timer Mod Education Editions has more specific uses. They come in charcoal with the classic, highly visible red disks and optional silicone skins. However, when Time Timer spoke with educators and therapists, they learned of needs for shorter-duration and longer-timed options, so they created 10-minute (white with a yellow disk), 30-minute (white with an orange disk), and 120-minute (white with a purple disk) versions.

Time Timer RETRO Eco Edition

For those seeking a combination of productivity and sustainability, Timer Timer developed the RETRO Eco Edition. These 7.5″ square timers are smaller than the Original line and come in two styles, Green Land and Blue Water. They take one AA battery, like the MOD line, and come only in 60-minute versions. Their key appeal is how they are manufactured.

By combining a rice husk byproduct with their plastic, they’ve eliminated any unnecessary plastic pieces, reducing the overall plastic usage these timers by nearly half compared to similar timers. Additionally, 1% of the Time Timer RETRO Eco Edition sales go to their Time Timer® Making Time for Trees Initiative, a program committed to planting more trees and offsetting Time Timer’s carbon footprint. This version also eliminates the plastic lens, making it easier to repair a disk and yield a longer product life cycle.

Time Timer BRAILLE 8”

Closing out the physical Time Timers is the newest and most intriguing, the Time Timer Braille 8″, the first tactile, high-contrast, visual timer!

This innovative, empowering design allows both users with vision impairment and fully sighted users to use the same device simultaneously to monitor time use, stay productive, and support focus without hyper-focus. It’s suitable for classroom use, students taking tests or working on their own or in groups, and adult work or household projects. Like the MOD and RETRO lines, this 8-inch square timer takes one AA battery.

This timer combines their traditional disappearing disk with a tactile-set bar and Braille writing, so that vision-impaired users can set and track time themselves, by touch. The audible alert is optional.

While this is not the only Braille timer I’ve seen, Time Timer’s version offers the advantage of the high-contrast color differences (of the disk against the white background) for low-vision and fully-sighted users with Braille for vision-impaired users, something I’ve not found in other options.

[For current prices of Time Timer, please see the individual product pages linked.]

Time Timer has other products, ones which I would identify as hybrid, offering both an analog and digital approach to timers, and we’ll examine them in the next post.

Again, Time Timer is not the only timer manufacturere, but their wide variety of options make them the first line of productivity support for children and adults, at home, work, and play.

If, based on what I explained in the first two parts of this series, you to believe that you, your child, or someone with whom you work might benefit from a timer that unites the features of a tangible, visual, and analog timer with an optional, gentle (but non-customizable) alert, Time Timer should be your first stop.

OTHER PHYSICAL TIMERS

Lest this post feel like a commercial for Time Timer, there are a variety of other tangible timers worth considering, especially for those individuals most needing both:

a timer with aesthetic appeal
a physical timer, something that approximates a fidget toy

but not necessarily one with a visual approach to the passage of time.

Focus Timer® Visual Timer

You may recall that last week, I noted a primary problem with using an hourglass timer: it requires the user to “gauge what those collective grains of sand mean.” With a real hourglass, you must judge the ratio of sand above to what already passed down. A modernized version eliminates that problem.

The Focus Timer® Visual Timer has an adjustable hourglass design allowing you to set customized time measurements from one to 100 minutes.

Made of what the manufacturers call a “magic touch material,” this 3.75″ x 2″ timer has some appealing features:

a “soothing” chime alert with three volume settings and a mute option (I put “soothing” in quotation marks because, as the video below shows, it’s a little high-pitched for my timer tastes.)
ability to recharge via an included USB-C charging cable
10 hours of use before requiring charging
100 days of standby time
a visual display such that horizontal blue rings are one minute each and yellow rings are 10 minutes each

It works by turning and “twisting” your fingers along the surface, much as you can operate your phone with drags, drops, taps, and pinches. Watch this video to appreciate how it works:

For the right user, this might be ideal for timing quiet reading and working stints, meditating, exercising, or other “gentle” activities, but not for large group meetings.

The Focus Timer® Visual Timer comes recommended by Gretchen Rubin, Cal Newport, Dan Ariely, and others in the productivity realm. It provides a beautiful visual display, making it (fairly) easy to judge the passage of time before the alert.

Note, compared to other timers, it’s a hefty $99 at Amazon or $89 at Focus Timer.

Moaas Timers

I’ve explored a number timers, and for those who don’t need a visual display of time passing but love that tactile, fidgety goodness of a timer they can hold and manipulate, Moaas has a variety of options.

The most basic are the Moaas Cube Timers, requiring two AA batteries. For about $15 at Amazon, these 2.6″ cubes come in violet, coral, mint green, white, and yellow.

Facets of the violet, white, and yellow cubes can be set for 5, 15, 30, and 60 minutes; the mint green version may be set for 1, 3, 5, and 10 minutes, while the coral’s settings are for 10, 30, 50, and 60 minutes.

To operate, just turn the timer so that the side with the number faces up and the timer starts counting immediately.

A red light blinks while the timer is in use, which can either be comforting or annoying, depending on how blinking lights impact your focus. Adjust the alarm volume between low and high with a switch; another flicked switch turns off the timer completely.

These very basic timers will suffice for timing exercising, studying, cooking or taking a nap, but I suspect they may be a little “low-rent.” While I don’t have a Mooas cube timer, I do own a fairly ancient, battery-operated, 2.25″ Datexx Time Cube that appears to be much the same. The interior weight that identifies which timer specification has been turned upright (and similar to what Mooas uses) rattles and the whole mechanism lacks the “fun” I expected from a fiddly version.

That said, Mooas has a variety of timer upgrades that may appeal to those who want a timer that looks cute and is fun to handle. The Multi-Cube Timer Clock combines a digital clock readout with pre-set timed facets on the cube. These 2.56″ square cubes come in two versions:

5, 15, 30, and 60 minutes in white for $18.90 at Amazon
1, 3, 5, and 10 minutes in mint green for about $17 at Amazon

While the Mooas shows them as also coming in yellow, coral, and grey, those do not seem to be sold currently.

Mooas’ Multi-Hexagon Clock Timers are cool to look at and offer similar fidget-worthy features in a hexagonal style, but Amazon has marked as a “frequently returned item,” which is somewhat concerning. As always, function should be a higher priority than aesthetics, even when aesthetic appeal is needed to encourage commitment to timer use.

Happily, there’s no such warning on the 2.24″D x 1.84″W x 2.24″H Mooas Dodecagon Time Ball Rechargeable Mini Timers, which come with eleven different pre-sets: 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 45, 60, and 90-minute timers and three colors: sand peach, blue, and white. Charge the timers with an included USB-C charger.

There are three alarm modes: sound, vibration, and silent, and it sells for about $25 on Amazon.

I suspect that this small, fiddly timer may appeal best to teenagers and gamers.

Similarly styled cube, hexagonal, and multi-sided timers can be found all over Amazon and in Big Box stores and dollar stores. This $38 TickTime Pomorodo Cube, which is not a cube at all but a hexagon, comes in blue, black, or white; has pause and resume modes, and the adjustable sound can be silenced or replaced with only vibration.

Mechanical Timers

Finally, remember that the simpler your physical timer is — if it requires no fiddling, no batteries, and no instruction manuals — the more likely you will be to use it.

If you don’t struggle with time blindness and don’t need to see the passage of time, and if you can accept (and won’t be startled by) a ding, a mechanical timer may be your best, first, and least expensive option.

If that’s a traditional pomodoro tomato timer, so be it.

But it just as easily may be a not-so-traditional dinosaur timer.

As always, the best solution for any productivity strategy is the one you’ll actually use.

This is just a sampling of tangible timers.

Their main advantages are that they look cool or cute, so you are more likely to remember to use them, and they satisfy a desire for a physical manipulation of time. However, the downfall of tangible timers is that they are rarely customizable beyond volume and time settings.

If you’re less concerned about being able to fiddle with your timers, and your delight is more likely to come from the ability to customize features (or just have your timer built into the devices you already use), next week’s post with digital and hybrid timers may be more to your liking.

Until then, do you have a tangible timer you love? Did one in this post tickle your fancy? Please let me know in the comments.

Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, and I may get a small remuneration (at no additional cost to you) if you make a purchase after clicking through to the resulting pages. The opinions, as always, are my own. (Seriously, who else would claim them?)

How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 2: Pick the Right Timer

Posted on: April 14th, 2025 by Julie Bestry | 8 Comments

Future, noun. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and our happiness is assured.

~ Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Bierce’s satire aside, the future is unpredictable, and no matter how speedily we attempt to get there, by the time we arrive where the future was, it has moved off again, always out of our grasp. Time is slippery that way, and the only control we have over time is how and what we choose to do with it.

Last week, in How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 1, we looked at a variety of ways to use timers to help us be more focused and productive at home and at work, for ourselves on our own or with our work teams or families.

Today, we’ll look at the qualities of what makes a “good” timer, in general and for you, specifically. A lot more goes into your choice than just being able to keep track of time as it keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking into the future.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD TIMER?

You could use an hourglass for noting the passage of time: two (attached) transparent glass bulbs, voluminous grains of sand, and gravity. Hourglasses have existed since the 16th century BCE and offer an somewhat accurate way of time keeping, whether to decorate your mantle or play a mean game of Boggle.

Unfortunately, an hourglass requires you to stop what you are doing, look over at it, and be able to gauge what those collective grains of sand mean.

It’s not very helpful for those who hyper-focus (as they’d never remember to look at the hourglass in the first place) in order to pace themselves. Worse, for those who are prone to easy distraction, hourglasses are silent; by the time you discern the ratio of sand on the top to sand on the bottom and calculate how much time you have left, you’ll have forgotten what you were writing or doing in the first place!

Hourglasses also lack the precision you’ll need if you want to make a soufflé.

So, let’s first look at the basic characteristics of a good timer.

A Good Timer Must Be Simple

It doesn’t matter whether you use a digital timer (or app) or an analog clock timer, though there are features of each style that will make you more likely to enjoy the experience and therefore stick to it.

The first essential principle is that a timer must be easy — preferably intuitive — to operate. You shouldn’t need a thirty-page manual or a YouTube video to figure out how it works.

A Good Timer Should Offer A Bonus

If a timer doesn’t offer something more than or different from what you’ve already got, why are you looking for something new?

Why buy a physical timer that’s not materially different from the kitchen timer on your stove?

If a turn of a dial and a loud, angry buzz will suffice for you, if you only need one timer set at a time, if all your work is done in proximity to the kitchen — why look further?

Similarly, why download an app that does what your phone’s countdown timer can already do?

We professional organizers caution clients that buying more and different bins and storage items won’t solve problems if you don’t purge excess and sort what remains. Similarly, if you’re not using the various timer apps you’ve already downloaded, and there’s nothing materially different about the ones you’re coveting in the app store, back away from the screen!

If a timer can’t do anything but replicate the features you already have available to you, it’s not a benefit; it’s clutter. So, either identify what’s not already satisfying about the timers you have at your disposal, or investigate what else is prompting you to keep shopping for a solution.

A Good Timer Integrates with What You Already Have

A timer should have the capacity to work with your calendar or to-do list, if necessary. You shouldn’t have to learn an entirely new app’s system for scheduling, time blocking, or task completion. If you’re using your timer in conjunction with a virtual meeting, it should integrate with the meeting software (as we discussed last week).

Does the timer you’re considering play nicely with whatever you’re already doing, or does it force you to jump through hoops.

Got a physical timer that fits in with your desk vibe, so it doesn’t look like a leftover from your 7th-grade math class? Stellar! But if your tangible timer topples off your shelf or is too big to fit in your school or work bag, you’re going to leave it behind.
Do you need a timer app that syncs with your calendar or to-do list, or at least fits with your digital-only life?

There’s no best timer solution because we all need and want different things. The key to your timer helping you succeed is if it helps reinforce routines and habits you already love (or at least are learning to try to love).

The key to your timer helping you succeed is if it helps reinforce routines and habits you already love (or at least are learning to try to love). Share on X

A Good Timer Shows You the Shape of Time

Time is measured in hours, minutes, seconds, even milliseconds, and yet it can seem amorphous. With the exception (as we’ll discuss later) of those who feel anxious working against a visible countdown clock, the prospect of using a timer delivers a great advantage: helping you see the progress of time at a glance.

You want a visual cue that says, “Look! Time is passing… but don’t panic,” — not one that leaves you feeling like Indiana Jones watching the stone door close.

The less cognitive effort and physical attention it takes to check in, the more you stay in flow. And the more you stay in the flow, focused on your goals, the more productive you will be. The timer is there to help you be motivated to start working, and then to prompt you step away when it’s time to rest.

When you look away to see if here’s any time left on the timer, you should be able to quickly refocus on your work. That means your time remaining needs to be displayed clearly and cause no confusion so you can slip seamless back into task mode.

Conversely, if you’ve been resting (or goofing off) and need to get back to work on the next Pomodoro, or must keep the roast from turning into a charcoal briquette, you’ll want a loud (enough) yoo-hoo to help you transition to the next stage!

A Good Timer Should Be Frictionless

If a timer is annoying or awkward to use, you’re going to find reasons to avoid using it. Setting a timer should be as easy as turning a dial or scrolling to the correct time and pushing a button or toggling it to ON.

A tangible timer should either be mechanical and battery-free, or the batteries should be easy to replace with the kinds of batteries you already tend to have on hand, usually AA or AAA. (A client of mine recently bought a large number of small flashlights to keep around her house in case of a power outage; she didn’t realize that they required 3.7 volt lithium ion batteries, so she had to purchase special batteries and a charger. Always check what kind of batteries a gadget requires!)

The annoying truth is that humans are willing to go to ridiculous levels of effort to avoid easy solutions to their problems.

Look at the number of children (and adult significant others who act like children) who won’t lift the lid off the laundry hamper in order to put dirty clothes inside. They’ll pile laundry up on top or just drop things on the floor rather than taking that teeny bit of one-second, lift-the-lid effort to use the hamper.

Thus, anything that creates friction — batteries that die quickly, an app that requires you to log in every time you want to use it — is going to slow you down or prompt you to avoid using it altogether.

When you're looking for a timer to help you be more productive, anything that creates friction — batteries that die quickly, and app that requires you to log in every time — is going to slow you down or prompt you to avoid using it… Share on X

A Good Timer Is Process-Agnostic

No, this has nothing to do with timing a Sunday morning or Friday night sermon. Rather, whatever timer you choose should let you develop your own personal system. Francesco Cirillo, the inventor of the Pomodoro Technique, used a process of trial and error to develop the idea of working in no more than four 25-minute sessions with a five-minute break between each.

It’s a popular strategy and definitely helps conquer procrastination. But as convenient as 25/5 Pomodoros are for students struggling to hunker down and study or work on problem sets, these are not magic productivity numbers.

If I wrote this blog in 25-minute chunks, I’d likely be interrupting myself just as I started to get my creative mojo flowing. Instead, I tend to use modified Pomodoros or the 52/17 Method when I’m writing because I can get into more of a flow. However, for boring admin work like accounting or filing, I’ll often opt for 15-minute time blocks because I know I will try to “beat the clock” to get as many tasks as possible done in an hour.

As we’ll see, a timer needs to fit the way you want to use it for you to achieve maximum productivity.

HOW TO IDENTIFY THE BEST TIMER FOR YOUR NEEDS AND PERSONALITY

Beyond the basics of a good timer, what makes a timer fit your path to productivity depends largely on your style and the kind of work you’re trying to accomplish. As we discussed last week, this could involve anything from a team brainstorming meeting at work to getting the laundry folded before company comes, preventing hyper-focus when dealing with email or just getting out the door on time.

Even with all of the basics in play, there are a variety of customizations that will make-or-break your timer experience.

Aesthetics of a Timer

A timer, whether for strict Pomodoros or just to make sure you don’t let the pasta water boil over, needs to invite you to use it.

If you’re a no-nonsense type of person, you may want a digital timer that lets you pick the work and break durations quickly, with no fuss, and that’s all!

If your aesthetic tastes tend toward the cozy and traditional, you might prefer something nostalgic like the traditional tomato-shaped timer; if you have a cute and twee aesthetic, your ideal timer may look like this:

Nuoswek Mechanical kitchen timer

If you’re opting for a digital timer, you might want to be able to adjust the brightness and color. Some people can’t abide the standard screen for a digital app and immediately opt for dark mode; others want a timer set to their personal color aesthetic.

For example, when I’m in the Time Timer app, even though I almost always prefer to use light mode on my screens for writing and surfing, I like dark mode for timers. For me, that makes the timer blend into the background and I can quickly regain my focus after checking the timer.

Similarly, I usually select pink or purple timers, but I have clients who color-code timers for specific tasks: red timers for high-impact work, blue timers for meditation, green for exercise, and so on.

Perhaps the visual aspects of a timer are less important to you than the auditory ones. Maybe you prefer your timer to have an alarm or musical alert that won’t be jarring.

In the comments on last week’s post, my colleague Sabrina Quairoli noted that using timers can make people anxious. That anxiety can come from the concept of a timer itself, or from the sound the timer makes. If it’s the sound, it’s a matter of selecting a timer with customizable auditory options.

If the concept of a timer with the time ticking down quickly makes you antsy, you’re going to want to avoid a digital timer showing the seconds slipping away as if you’re trying to make your Oscar acceptance speech before the orchestra plays you off the stage.

Instead, opt for a timer with a soothing visual approach, one that doesn’t show the second-by-second passage of time. Rather, select one that indicates the overarching passage of time (the minutes or chunks of time) without the more granular metrics.

For example, all of Time Timer‘s analog timers that use a colored disk would be appropriate for a more gentle approach to illustrating the passage of time.

Note: The TimerTimer Twists, have both an analog and digital countdown; if seeing those seconds disappear stresses you out, skip those versions.

Customizability without complexity

You want a timer that will adjust to your rhythm, whether you’re a 25-minute Pomodoro purist for blogging or a “give me 43 minutes because that’s how long (without commercials) it took Columbo to solve a crime” computer code bug tracker.

Consider whether you just want your timer to just block time and alert you when your scheduled time is up, or if you prefer it to automatically set alternating work and rest intervals. Some timers will let you set any increments you want, at least up to 99 minutes. Others are fixed, and will only let you set the timer in five minute increments.

If you’re hoping to use the timer to for cooking, exercising, or for medical purposes (like the seconds after self-administering an injection before you can remove the needle, or the number of seconds to do breathing exercises), you’ll want to be as granular as possible, so seconds and minutes will be key.

Teachers and parents may prefer short-format timers to help kids see and feel the duration of time: of five minutes in time-out, ten minutes of quiet reading, fifteen minutes until bedtime. Meanwhile, knowledge workers will likely need larger chunks of measurable time, from 25 minutes to two hours.

Affective Design Customization

Affective design is an approach that focuses on creating products, services, and experiences that evoke emotions (or, for some purposes, avoid evoking the wrong emotions) in users.

In other words, you want to pick a timer (or selection of timers) with emotionally-supportive vibes (as the kids say). Think about the reason you’re setting up your timer, and how you want to feel while you’re working and, in particular, how you want to feel when the timer goes off and you’re being alerted to the need to transition.

Some people want Mister Rogers with a gentle ding or buzz to remind them that, “Hey, friend, you’re doing great, and you deserve the reward of a five minute break.” (Bonus material: Mr. Rogers Neighborhood episode: Waiting for Time to Pass.)

Others want Judge Judy slamming the gavel to say, “Time’s up, sweetie!” in so harsh a manner that there’s no chance you’ll go back to TikTok or forget to use the restroom if you’ve been hyper-focusing way too long.

As we’ve alluded, may want to adjust your sound options to create the best vibe. Do you want to be be shaken to attention to make sure you’ll stop doomscrolling and get out the door to pick your kid up from ballet? Or might you prefer a soothing trill of music to signal the end of a writing session (without a din) so that you won’t forget that brilliant turn of phrase you were just starting to write?

One-and-done or loop-de-loop?

Just as you may need to consider how in-your-face a timer should be to help you be as productive as possible, you also should think about how attentive a timer you want.

If you’re cooking something and are afraid either your body or your mind will stray, a one-and-done timer will suffice.

Conversely, there are a number of reasons you might want to set repeated or looping cycles, such as if:

you’re training yourself to tidy up your work area for five minutes every hour
you want to take breaks between sessions, whether you’re doing a 25/5 Pomodoro, following the 52/17 Method, or considering any of the other productivity techniques in Frogs, Tomatoes, and Bees: Time Techniques to Get Things Done.
you’re following the advice in Take a Break — How Breaks Improve Health and Productivity and following the 20-20-20 Rule for your vision. (Every 20 minutes, look 20 feet away for 20 seconds to prevent eye strain!)

A looping function is especially nice if you tend to overstay your planned breaks between tasks. Setting a repeated work/break timer prevents “I’ll take a five-minute break” from becoming a Netflix bender.

You may not always want to create repetitive cycles, but a timer that can repeat or remind you to reset will help automate your habits. (Generally, you’ll need a digital timer if you want cycles to loop automatically.)

Discretion is the better part of timing

In addition to considering what’s the best timer for your own situation, you may need to seek one with discreet modes for the benefit of not disturbing the people around you. For example:

Sleeping baby by Ivone De Melo

sleeping babies (or easily startled pets)
roommates or housemates (particularly those on different sleep, class, or work schedules)
co-workers in cubicles or open-format offices
fellow library or coffee house patrons

In such situations, you’ll want a timer with the stealth of a Mission: Impossible agent (not the drama of a WWE competitor making a grand entrance.

If you often find yourself working (or otherwise needing to focus) while in the company of others with different focus agendas, consider whether it might be to your advantage to find a timer with alternatives to an audible “time’s up” alert. A gentle blink or color shift can be just as effective as a sound.

Picking a timer for someone else

We all want the timer equivalent of Mary Poppins — practically perfect in every way — but the truth is that we will always have to consider the task involved and personality of the user. Additionally, you may need to identify timer solutions for people with special auditory or visual challenges (like the Time Timer BRAILLE 8”) or medical needs.

In other words, the timer your seven-year-old needs to focus while doing math homework may be very different from what your fifteen-year-old needs to get up from an hour of gaming and leave for band rehearsal.

And both of them may need something very different from what you need from a timer at work or that Grandpa needs to remember to take his medication after dinner.

None of this means you have to spent a fortune on timers; just knowing the advantages of particular features will allow you to discern what will work best. In the next post in this series, we’ll examine traditional and novel timers for improving productivity and yielding the just right amount of focus.

What timer features are the most important to you? How does do these change depending on your work or life contexts?

How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 1

Posted on: April 7th, 2025 by Julie Bestry | 12 Comments

Everyone seems to agree that January slogged on, but people are shocked that we’ve suddenly arrived in April, with February and March having disappeared in the blink of an eye.

The truth is, most people aren’t very good at gauging the passage of time. In her A Working Library blog, Mandy Brown wrote Out of Time about writing, taking breaks, and resting. Prompted by another author’s piece about having gone on a retreat to find time to focus and recommending an analog timer (unsurprisingly, a Time Timer), Brown ordered one, but suffered frustration because she couldn’t get it to work. She kept putting in batteries and trading them out for others, finally ending the anecdote with:

I thought perhaps the timer didn’t like rechargeable batteries—some devices are persnickety that way—so I went rummaging around the house for a regular battery, found one in the toolbox, swapped it into the timer, turned the dial. And waited.

And waited.

Nothing.

I gave up, and went to fix lunch.

About a half hour later, as I was putting dishes away, I heard a steady beep from somewhere upstairs.

It was the timer, going off.

The damn thing had been working all along.

I just didn’t think it was working fast enough.

Time often fails to work as we think it should. It drags on, or it disappears. But of course, time is uniform; time is a constant. There are always 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, and so on. We are the ones with the problem, not time. We lack motivation and procrastinate. At first, the time available seems endless; then we panic and finally settle down, but allow ourselves to be interrupted, and the available time is suddenly gone.

In one of my most popular posts, Frogs, Tomatoes, and Bees: Time Techniques to Get Things Done, we looked at what we need to understand about our problematic time behaviors, and at nifty system solutions, including the Pomodoro Technique and its offshoots (Tocks, 90-Minute Blocks, 52/17 Method, and Flow State).

The exact number of minutes may vary, but the strategies remain the same:

Do a brain dump to know everything you have to work on.
Break large projects and concepts into smaller, distinct tasks so you can identify specific activities from which to choose.
Prioritize what’s important to find the essential next task to tackle.
Start that task and stay focused.
Take a break. (Not sure how or why? Read Take a Break — How Breaks Improve Health and Productivity.)
Lather, rinse, repeat.

Some methods may also involve noting what internal or external disruptions occurred. (Did you get hungry and wander off for a snack? Did a stray notification steal your attention and take you down a social media rabbit hole? Did your kids or co-worker need help finding something right in front of their eyes?)

To improve our use of time, we can incorporate short-term accountability, bringing in co-working buddies to body double and keep us focused and on-task.

Other methods involve giving ourselves rewards. Some digital apps support Pomodoro-based work using gamification, rewarding focus and completion. Maybe you’re not a carrot person but a stick person, and need a negative consequence for not sticking with it?

No matter your method, there’s one more commonality to all of these approaches: keeping track of time! And for that, we get the biggest bang for our buck by using timers.

WHY AND HOW TO USE TIMERS FOR PRODUCTIVITY

“C’mon, really?” clients ask, giving me the side-eye when I pull out one of my visual timers. “Can’t I just work until I get it done?”

Sure. Maybe. But probably not, especially if I’m not there with them.

If telling yourself to get down to work — and working a certain amount of time and not getting distracted but also not hyper-focusing to the point of getting burned out, eye strain, and a headache — actually worked for everyone, then time management wouldn’t be a “thing.”

Timers help us in all manner of ways, at work at and home. At its most basic, a physical timer or a visual digital timer/app creates a tangible representation of time passing so you can see and feel time.

Use Timers for Productivity at Work

You’re probably not shocked at the idea of using a timer, but you may feel silly employing one. Do you think that unless you’re a professional athlete, a surgeon struggling to perform a procedure within a safe time span, or a special effects master overseeing synchronization, that timers can’t help you?

There are many ways to improve your productivity at work with the help of timers.

For yourself

Avoid falling into the email rabbit hole — Set a timer so you don’t “come to” three hours later in the midst of an email-induced stupor, wondering why you just read an entire newsletter about artisanal butter when you were just looking for a sign-up email to send to your colleague.

Time block your tasks like a pro — We’ve talked extensively about time blocking here at Paper Doll HQ. The only way to make sure you have time for all of your priorities is to schedule time on your calendar — the space where time lives — for attending to them.

But your calendar isn’t the only tool you need for time blocking. It tells you when you’re supposed to start a task, but how will you remember when to move to the next thing?

Want to tackle your bookkeeping and still have time for a snack? Set your timer, get it done, and reward yourself with something yummy like an apple. Or cheese. Or cookies. (As they say on TikTok, we listen and we don’t judge.)

Prevent perfectionism paralysis — When societies were agrarian, we knew we were “finished” when we’d reaped the harvest; most modern work ends with deadlines — or (seemingly) never ends at all. Give yourself a hard stop on tweaking that PowerPoint so you don’t turn a simple deck into a TED Talk that nobody asked for. When the timer buzzes, you’re done. Move on with your day (and your life).

Give yourself a hard stop on tweaking that PowerPoint so you don’t turn a simple deck into a TED Talk that nobody asked for. When the timer buzzes, you're done. Move on with your day (and your life). Share on X

Keep deep work from locking you in the deep freeze — You’re focused, you’re in the zone — until you look up and realize that it’s dark outside and you forgot to eat lunch or pick up your kid from soccer practice. A timer keeps you from pulling a Christopher Nolan-style time dilation.

For your team

Prevent your meetings from dragging on like Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” (run-time: 3 hours and 29 minutes!) — Keep a visual timer in sight so everyone knows when the meeting should actually end, not just when it starts to improve satisfaction and engagement. Otherwise, the Monday status meeting begins to feel like a hostage situation.

If you’re the one moderating the meeting, install and set up the Zoom timer in the app:

Add the Timer – Clock, Agenda, Countdown & Stopwatch to your paid Zoom account
Using the Zoom Timer App

(Google Meet has a similar option you can add to the Chrome browser. While Microsoft Teams does not have a built-in timer, you can integrate third-party timers into a PowerPoint presentation or add one to the meeting itself.

Help participants in your virtual meetings keep it snappy — Have you ever been on a Zoom call where someone talks in circles or drones on? Use a timer built into the screen and the meeting won’t devolve into a filibuster.

Help team members segment their time for time tracking — Use timers to track how long tasks take and identify areas for improvement.

Having a timer go off (no more than) every thirty minutes or hour to prompt logging/tracking activities will help team members be more aware of how they spend their time, and make them (and you) less likely to get distracted by low-urgency, low-importance tasks. (For more on the benefits of time tracking, see my recent post, How to Use Time Tracking to Improve Your Productivity.)

However, it’s important that you don’t use timers to micromanage your team. A timer can be a powerful tool, but the moment you use it to time someone’s bathroom breaks or note that they come back from lunch two minutes after the buzzer, you’ve veered from Motivational Mama to Big Brother.

Use Timers to Improve Personal Time & Daily Living

Keep your meals from turning into messes — The number one most common reason for using a timer at home is for cooking, and yet people really underutilize timers. Baking brownies? Sure, you’ll set the timer for 25 minutes. You know that it’s important to measure how long something should cook when there’s a recipe in the cookbook or the back of the box.

Kitchen Timer of HotPoint Electric Range, Steven Pavlov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

But how often do you set a timer to make sure you don’t get distracted and walk away altogether? Have you ever put the pasta in the boiling water or started the soup, only to get pulled away from the stove by your kids, a telephone call, a story on the news? Have you ever just turned your back on the stove to scroll through your feed and totally lost track of time until you heard the unmistakeable splish-splash of a pot boiling over?

It’s not really true that a watched pot never boils, but it is absolutely true that an unwatched pot boils over before you’re ready. And an monitored oven or air fryer will turn whatever you put in it into ash.

There’s a reason your microwave has a timer built-in. The manufacturers know that you’ll set a timer for something set to cook for a long while, but that you’ll overestimate your ability to get back in two minutes and forty seconds and completely forget that you were cooking.

If you’re not going to watch your food cook (and you are forgiven for not wanting to do that), set a timer. Use the timer built into your oven or just shout out, “Hey, Siri, set a timer for 7 minutes!”

And honestly, if you are sometimes so distracted that you don’t know why the alarm is going off, even if you set it fifteen minutes ago, you can say, “Hey, Siri, set an alarm for 7 minutes and call it ‘Pasta'” so that when you look at your phone to turn off the alarm, you’ll know what’s what.

Save your laundry from shrinkage and wrinkleage — Modern washers and dryers have all sorts of bells and whistles. Well, bells and music, at least, with their deedle-deedle-ding musical trills as the washer changes cycles. However, if your laundry machines are in the basement and you’re on the second floor, you might not even hear those twinklingly annoying “dulcet” laundry tones.

And if, like me, you have a practical but not very modern washer/dryer set-up (the kind without myriad settings and just normal/delicate/heavy duty settings), your dryer may have one loud ear-splitting BUZZ to alert you that your clothes are dry and absolutely nothing (but the absence of white noise) to let you know that your washer is done. And again, if you’re not right by your laundry area, you may not even hear that.

But do you know what you always hear?

Your phone, because it’s never more than a foot away from you for long, and usually it’s within arm’s reach. Get to know how long your washer and dryer cycles are and create alarms for them: 17 or 35 minutes or whatever. Name the cycles something simple, like “Get clothes from dryer” or “Switch clothes from washer to dryer.”

The next time you start a load, just slide the toggle to ON and you’ll be alerted just about when your laundry is ready for you. This way, you’ll have no wet clothes sitting all night in the washer growing mold, and no set-in wrinkles from clothes that could have been folded or hung.

Get a shower time reality check — Ever take a shower so long you accidentally turn it into a spa day?

A timer keeps you from running your water bill up like you’re auditioning for The Little Mermaid. An alternative to keeping a regular timer in your steamy bathroom is investing in a Bluetooth shower speaker connected to your cell phone, with an alarm set to play a favorite song. There are a lot of popular, inexpensive shower speakers that look something like this:

Though I have to admit that I’m pretty partial to the aesthetics of this Ernie-approved rubber ducky version:

Make it out the door…on time (for once) — Somehow, getting dressed and grabbing your keys takes exactly as long as the time you don’t have.

The underlying problem may be that you are always trying to do just one more thing. Or perhaps your physical space’s disorganization holds you back. Maybe you don’t have a good morning routine, or it could be that you’re subconsciously trying to sabotage yourself because you really don’t want to go to work or Jazzercise or your mother-in-law’s house.

But if you truly want to get out the door in time, a timer can help keep you focused on the “time benchmarks” of your day, like when to be done with breakfast and get in the shower, or when to make sure you’re putting on your shoes or grabbing your bag.

A timer is you in the present, sending a message to yourself in the future, which will be received by your future present-self as a message from your past self. (Christopher Nolan has nothing on Paper Doll!)

Limit doomscrolling before bed∫— Set a timer so you don’t accidentally binge-watch TikTok or Instagram until the sun comes up, causing you to regret your entire life.

And if you tend to doomscroll in the morning and forget to get out of bed, setting a series of morning timers (annoyingly two minutes apart) can’t hurt.

Speed-Clean Like a Sitcom Montage — Set a 15-minute timer and pretend you’re in a time-lapse TV-cleaning montage. Bonus points for using Eye of the Tiger as your background music.

This works especially well if you want to play 52 Pickup with your kids. Chores are boring; competition (against their siblings, against you, or even against their all-time best score) makes them more challenging. Let’s face it — hours between getting home from school and bedtime can be messy. Set a timer to see who can pick up the most number of things (that don’t belong there) and put them away; the winner gets to pick the background music for the next day’s challenge.

Running around to find things to pick up will either wear your kids out so that they’ll sleep more soundly or make it more likely that they’ll (eventually) put things away after using them; either way, it’s a win, teaching them that it’s not your responsibility to follow them around playing maid!

Convince your kids that bedtime is not a negotiation — Maybe your third-grader seems more like a tiny corporate attorney when bedtime approaches, acting surprised by the deadline and immediately offering wheedling compromises.

A visual timer lets kids see how much time is left before bedtime, so they can’t argue with Father Time. The idea of 8 o’clock is pretty abstract. Make it more tangible.

When I was growing up, I knew what time I had to go to bed based on what time a particular TV show ended, but with streaming more popular that broadcast, that sense of time in increments of hours and half-hours and even segments between commercial breaks (the served me well when I worked in television) is meaningless to today’s kids, when not only can you start a show at any moment you want, but you can pause it and finish it the next day (or never).

Pacify the “Just One More Game” gamer — If you, or your partner, roommate, or kid always needs “one more round” of their game before stopping, a timer makes it clear when it’s time to save and quit for the day. It’s harder to argue with a timer alert than a person, and more difficult to resent a non-human telling you it’s time to pack it in.

It's harder to argue with a timer alert than a person, and more difficult to resent a non-human telling you it's time to pack it in. Share on X

Keep screen time from turning into screen day — Whether it’s kids, spouses, or yourself, a visual timer helps prevent an innocent 30-minute YouTube break from spiraling into an entire season of The Office.

To summarize, whether we are at work or at home, we can use timers:

To make sure we focus.
To make sure we don’t hyper-focus (or goof off) too long.
To remind us to take breaks and remember to rest.

Of course, this is just the beginning of the productivity magic of timers.

As this series continues, we’ll look at what makes a great timer — for the way your brain works and for improved productivity for particular tasks. It’s not that tangible timers or digital timers are better, per se, but they each have different positive attributes and potential pitfalls, depending on the purpose for which you’re blocking out time.

As we move on, I’ll share classic, beloved timers as well as the newest and niftiest options for both analog/tangible timers and digital timers/apps, and help you figure out which will help you achieve your productivity goals.

Now that you can envision a wider variety of circumstances for using a timer to amp up your productivity, please share if there are other circumstances you use timers to help you buckle down and focus or, alternatively, keep you from worrying that you’ll hyper-focus right through dinner. What has worked for you, your work team, or your family?

Paper Doll Investigates Birthday Freebies: The Hidden Cost of Free Stuff

Posted on: March 17th, 2025 by Julie Bestry | 12 Comments

My birthday was last week. I don’t need to say exactly how old I am; let’s just say I was born sometime between the Pleistocene Era and the invention of the internet. I came into the world with big mouth (as evidence below) and a fondness for sharing my thoughts.

Paper Doll and Paper Mommy, mid-March 1967

Birthdays are nice. They come with gifts and cake. In my case, they come with cheese, too. All my favorite people know how much I love cheese, and Craig, my friend since grad school, has started a tradition of sending me a box of 50 mini (3/4-ounce) wrapped Cabot Seriously Sharp white cheddar cheeses every year through Vermont’s Dakin Farm.

In the 21st century with relatively little effort on one’s part, birthdays can also come with freebies. So far this month, I’ve received emails and texts alerting me to the following birthday freebies and discounts:

Birthday Food Freebies

Auntie Anne’s — one free hot pretzel
Bad Daddy Burger Bar — one free burger, salad, or sandwich
Ben & Jerry’s — one free scoop of ice cream
Chicken Salad Chick — one free meal (I get the Pimento Cheese on a croissant!)
Fresh Market — one free (gigantic) slice of cake
Jimmy John’s — one free sandwich or wrap
Krispy Kreme — free 3-count of Original Glazed doughnuts
Moe’s Southwest Grill — one free order of queso (cheese!) or guacamole
Publix — one free container of ice cream or a cake “bar” from the bakery
Regal Theater — one free small popcorn
Starbucks — one free drink or snack
Waffle House — one free classic waffle

Birthday Non-Food Freebies

The Container Store — 15% off
IKEA — $10 off any purchase of $10 or more
Kohl’s — $5 off
Lane Bryant — $20 off any purchase of $20.01 or more (Ample-bosomed ladies, this is definitely the big ticket winner!)
Target — 5% off any shopping trip (and yes, I acknowledge Target’s “issues”)
World Market — $5 off as well as a separate 15% off

By now, you may be wondering, what does this have to do with organizing?

FREEBIES: A DOUBLE-EDGED SLICE OF CAKE

I didn’t have to go to much effort to secure these freebies and discounts. Most apps and reward programs ask for your birthday when you sign up. We can debate whether giving up our month and date of birth to a corporate entity is an invasion of privacy (and whether it’s worth it to get a Bloomin’ Onion or a Chocolate Thunder from Down Under).

By the time my inbox finished shouting “Happy Birthday!” I felt less like the birthday girl and more like a walking coupon book. Birthday freebies, and freebies in general, feel like a win. And when I nibbled a bite of cinnamon coffee cake or try on a deeply-discounted article of clothing I coveted, but didn’t want to splurge on, I felt like a winner.

But these freebies can come with strings attached — financial, organizational, and productivity-related strings.

Obviously, birthday freebies are a marketing tool. We generally ignore that, though, as we all get that little dopamine rush when someone (even a random corporation) recognizes our birthday.

And we all love “free” things, even as we recognize that being the object of a marketing campaign means that, while we are not necessarily paying for something with money, we are paying with our loyalty and our attention. As the saying goes, if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product.

Advertisers are buying our attention; rewards programs are buying our loyalty. Conversely, my grad school friend Craig is only getting my good will and my resplendently awful — or awfully gouda — cheese puns in my thank you cards.

Maybe you feel like you’re wise to the freebie game, but there are some sneaky gremlins hiding among the balloons and presents.

The “I’ll Just Spend a Little Extra” Trap

Let’s say your freebie gives you a free fancy burger, like the Fried Mozzarella Burger at Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar. (It’s my go-to, with the Impossible Burger pinch hitting for the meat version.)

You’re probably not going out to eat by yourself. Yes, you may make a Starbies run on your own, but you’ll probably bring your spouse or significant other, your kids, your bestie, or whomever is available so you don’t have to eat dinner alone while scrolling your phone. On one hand, this prompts a social activity; on the other, depending on the economics of those with you, you may be digging into your wallet. (I mean, when it’s not your actual birthday; on that day, people are likely to treat you.)

Second, everything on this particular menu is standalone. Who eats a burger (even a plant-based one) without fries or onion rings or, in this case, fried pickles? So, you’re going to pay for that. And when you’re having a burger, are you really going to wash it down with water? You probably want a cola, or perhaps an adult beverage.

And hey, it’s your birthday! (Or, at least it was when you found out about this freebie). On your birthday, or whenever you’re dining out for a special occasion — even if that special occasion is just that you’re dining out — you’re going to want a delicious dessert, too, even if it’s not your habit to get dessert.

Last week at the Greek restaurant, my dining companion had a Bananas Foster cheesecake and I had a baklava cheesecake. And I barely looked at the price because it was a special occasion.

It’s rare to get a free food item and not end up buying a beverage, a side dish, or a dessert. Suddenly, that “free” molten lava cake costs you $24.99 in dinner, beverage, tax, and tip. That “free” milkshake? It came with a $15 burger and a side of buyer’s remorse.

When you get a freebie, what you “spend” is almost certainly going to dig into your financial budget, but it’s also draining your calorie or carbohydrate budget.

The “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” Effect

Freebies create a sense of urgency: “If I don’t grab this TODAY, I’m missing out!”

I received some of the notices on the first of the month and they are good for all of March; others I received on my birthday and are good for thirty days after. Just a few of the meals are only good until the middle of the last week of March, and one, for Starbucks, had to be used on my birthday. (My dinner with a friend at my favorite Greek restaurant just happenned to be next to Starbucks, which made that easy, but some years, I’ve been known to take a Starbucks run at 10 p.m. just to grab my freebie.)

If you aren’t organized in your approach to taking advantage of them, you may feel pressured to go out chasing your freebies like they’re Pokémon and — spoiler alert — you can’t catch ’em all.

This attitude can lead to impulse shopping. You plan to just use the $5 off at a store to buy something you want, but maybe when you get there, the item you had in mind isn’t in stock. Or maybe you didn’t have anything in mind (beyond getting something worth $5), so you roam the aisles and end up buying something random you didn’t need because you’re not going to be cheated out of your opportunity to get something for free!

This doesn’t just apply to birthday freebies, of course. Sometimes you’ll see a great deal in an ad, and you’ll think, “Ooh, SuchAndSuchAStore is having a 30% off sale; I have to go!” But unless you were already interested in buying something that you know they have, and you were just waiting for a convenient time to go, that sale is sneaking into your subconscious, and you’re not going to leave the store without some purchase, even possibly something you didn’t (and still don’t really) want or need.

The Clutter Conundrum of Freebies

Your voicemail is full. Why?

Your junk drawer called — it’s staging an intervention. (Speaking of which, this is a good time to plug a classic Paper Doll post, Is Your Junk Drawer a Drunk Drawer? 3 Steps to An Organized Junk Drawer.)

Oh, and your pile of free T-shirts called — it’s tired of being the wardrobe for your imaginary gym life.

This is less of a problem with birthdays freebies, as you already participate in the rewards programs of all of the companies inviting you, their loyal customer, to partake of their largesse in wishing you a glorious natal day! And what they’re offering you is something in the general area of what you already want — food you like or the kind of merchandise you already buy.

But if you’ve ever gone to a conference, a convention, a fair, a festival, a workshop, or anyplace that they were giving away free swag, you know what those kinds of freebies that pile up:

pens — The ink will dry up before you’ll ever use them
canvas bags — Your trunk is already overloaded with more canvas bags than any amount of groceries you could possible tote in them — or even afford. You don’t need to adopt every orphaned tote bag on the planet!
keychains — How many keychains does a person need? That’s why the extras end up in your junk drawer!
T-shirts promoting somebody else’s business, so that you becoming a walking billboard (which is why you never wear any of them in public)
candles — It may be adorable or smell delicious until you realize you’ve collected enough unused free candles to illuminate the final season of Stranger Things.

The Time-Suck Spiral of Freebies: What Is Your Time Worth?

Hunting down all of your freebies takes time and energy.

Let’s go back to what I said about feeling that you need to “catch ’em all.” That prompts you to run errands to places you might otherwise have skipped. For example, while I love Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, the only Ben & Jerry’s ice cream parlor is downtown, and I don’t get there very often. If I want their ice cream (and when don’t I?) I could go to the corner grocery store and buy a pint; but with self-induced pressure to use up all my freebies, I could be tempted to come up with a reason (OK, an excuse) to go downtown.

But I’d be missing something important. My time has value!

I don’t have any errands to run downtown. Do I need to use up the time and gasoline to go there just to get a scoop of ice cream?

Consider this: if you’re driving twenty minutes for a free coffee or pastry, is it actually free?

Develop a Freebie ROI Rule. Discern what the return on your investment is, in order to figure out if it’s worth the effort.

To be fair, it might be. If you’re an overworked, over-scheduled parent, taking advantage of a food freebie like a coffee or an ice cream doesn’t just mean you’ll get a food treat at no cost. It means you get a reason — or yeah, an excuse — to put yourself first. That round-trip drive, and that time to a far-away store or coffee house and the time to enjoy it, might very well be the only “you” time you get all week. You have this stranger on the internet’s permission: take inner peace where you can get it.

The only way, for sure, that you will know whether it’s worth your time to collect on your freebie is that if you make sure you remember that your freebie is an option, not an obligation.

HOW TO ENJOY FREEBIES WITHOUT THE CHAOS

It doesn’t seem like birthday freebies were this chaotic a decade ago, or even just before the pandemic. It feels like it’s really become a key marketing technique to get people into restaurants and stores. Embrace them, but employ caution.

Be Organized

At the start of March, I made an inbox folder and routed all birthday freebie/discount-related emails to it. Once I had several, I made two lists, one for edible freebies and one for merchandise freebies.

Most of the emails alerted me to freebies in the apps, but this is one of those times where Paper Doll really prefers paper. I printed the pages of the emails with essential info: QR codes, bar codes, deadlines, and crucial legalese. I made note of the expiration dates in the upper right corner of each printout, separated officers by food and non-food, and sorted them with the earliest expiration dates on the top of the stack.

Of course, I could have just as easily routed the emails to Evernote and set a pre-deadline reminder on each note. A short list of the freebie and expiration date maybe organized enough for you.

On my actual birthday, I got a whole new slew of alerts, and followed the same procedure, so what I needed to attend to the soonest was at the top of each clipped stack.

I’m keeping the folder in the car, so if I unexpectedly find myself near the place to redeem the freebie, I’ll have what I need.

This doesn’t mean I’ll absolutely take advantage of each birthday freebie; it just means I won’t miss any opportunities due to the clutter or chaos of announcements in random places.

Be Selective

Prioritize freebies you genuinely want or will use.

There are some apps or accounts I have because I needed to take advantage of a very specific discount or availability of something that I’ll never need again. Maybe it was for buying a gift for an ex-boyfriend who is no longer in the picture. (Who’s to say?)

Just because you have the opportunity to use a freebie (really and truly) doesn’t mean you have to. You have options:

Ignore it — Toss out the mail or close the app, and just don’t think about it. (Yes, if you’re a Frugal Felicity, that may be difficult, but Paper Doll gives you permission.)
Go halfsies — Don’t feel like you have to make an immediate decision. Look up the restaurant menu online and if something appeals to you, order just the free item in the app and arrange for curbside pickup so you won’t be tempted to eat/buy more than you want. For a store, surf the app or the website and see if there’s anything you were already planning to buy. If so, let the idea percolate and see if it boils over or your better angels turn off the burner. If not, let the freebie expire.
Arrange to let a friend use the freebie or discount. — Even if you have to go there with your friend, you get the benefit of their company without the obligation to spend from your financial or caloric budgets.

Declutter as you go. If a freebie isn’t useful, set it free or find a way to make it a blessing for someone else. But as you do acquire tangible things with your freebies, make an effort to toss whatever is being replaced.

Set a Spending Limit

Decide in advance how much you’re willing to spend when redeeming a “free” item.

This might be a monetary amount you’re comfortable with because of your actual budget, or you may just want to keep yourself from going hog-wild with temptation.

Sometimes when I’m bored or in the neighborhood and waiting for an appointment, I’ll go into Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, a sort-of factory discount store and window shop for entertainment value. But I will set a dollar limit in advance — usually $15, but sometimes even $5 or $10. I can afford more, thank goodness, but I’m much more discerning if I’ve got that limit in mind. If I really want to spend more, I know I can, but the limit forces me to be mindful, and I’m more likely to leave without that impulse purchase. (And of course, I can always come back the next day if I’m hankering for a purchase.)

Similarly, you may want to set a caloric budget when taking advantage of an edible freebie. I’m diabetic, so I already know that I have a limited number of carbs I want to eat at a meal. If I’m going to a restaurant with amazing desserts, I’ll probably opt for seafood for dinner to use my carb count for cake; if the desserts aren’t tempting, I am much more likely to get pasta or something else equally carbalicious.

That free caramel macchiato will feel less like a win when you add a muffin, a sandwich, and a reusable cup that’s destined to live in your car’s cup holder.

If you have (or would like to have) more willpower when dining out with a freebie offer, organize your ordering plan around your food budget.

Schedule Strategically

Just as you’re being judicious with your financial resources or nutritional boundaries, be just as cautious and wise when scheduling how and when you’ll take advantage of freebies.

Don’t cram a dozen freebie redemptions into one weekend!

If you’ve never seen the Gilmore Girls episode called A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving, Lorelai and Rory end up racing to four different Thanksgiving celebrations in one day. At Emily and Richard’s, there a get-dressed-up traditional meal. At Lane’s house, Mrs. Kim’s holds a strict, Korean dinner. At Sookie and Jackson’s, there’s a farm-to-table feast complete with Jackson’s wild and turkey-frying family, and at Luke’s diner, they settle in for a real family meal.

They found it fun (like freebies), but stressful (also like freebies).

If you’re sprinting through the mall like you’re on Supermarket Sweep, maybe it’s time to rethink your freebie game plan.

Spreading redemptions out will have three benefits.

First, you’ll have less stress. You’ll be fitting freebies into a carefully considered calendar instead of feeling like you’re battling Black Friday crowds.

Second, you’ll be less likely to bump up against the margins of your willpower (re: your financial and caloric budgets).

Third, the special delight of your birthday will last longer. Won’t it be more fun to celebrate each day of your birthday month (or the weeks following your actual birthday) if there’s a little treat each day?

Turn Down the Guilt

If you were raised with few resources, you may feel guilty or uncomfortable not taking reaping the financial benefits of free things. But, again, some free things have strings attached.

Your resources (of money, physical and mental health, and time) affiliated with the freebies have value, as does your sanity and chance to have a less chaotic schedule. And nobody gets to say how you spend your resources except you.

It’s alright to enjoy your freebies. It’s okay to let some offers go. It’s your (birthday) party, and you can cry if you want to, but you can also get $20 off a pretty bra at Lane Bryant or eat a free slice of cake if you want to, too!

Your birthday’s about you, not about proving you’re the reigning champ of Birthday Freebie Bingo!

FINAL BIRTHDAY FREEBIE THOUGHTS

There’s a yummy Italian restaurant, Provino’s, with six locations in Georgia and one here in Chattanooga. They’re known for their buttery garlic knots and free birthday dinners:

We have made quite a name for ourselves when it comes time for a birthday celebration. Come in on your birthday and get the Spaghetti Classica with marinara or meat sauce or if you choose take $14.50 off any menu choice, this includes our famous salad, garlic rolls and a birthday dessert. (Please show I.D.)

This is why there’s always a massive crowd in Provino’s lobby waiting to get in. There are only 365 days in year, which means there’s a good chance on any given day, that it’s a lot of people’s birthdays, and as previously noted, when you are getting a free meal, you’re pretty likely to want to take people with you.

On the plus side, free food and festivity! (Also on the plus side, those garlicky, buttery knots.) On the downside, the crowds mean there may be a long wait. Only you know which matters more to you.

Don’t let a handful of free offers turn your birthday into a part-time job. The real gift is your time, so spend it wisely — and maybe on cake. Or cheese. Or cheesecake.

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Archive for ‘Productivity’ Category

How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 4: Digital Timers

DIGITAL TIMERS YOU ALREADY OWN

Your Built-In Device Timer

DEDICATED DIGITAL TIMERS FOR FOCUS AND PRODUCTIVITY

Browser Based Timers

Pomodor

Focus Keeper

Pomofocus

Integrated Timer Apps

Timer Apps and Programs

Session

Flow

Bear Focus Timer

Moosti

Online Timers

LifeAt

YouTube Channels with Timers

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How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 3: Tangible Timers

DISK-Y BEHAVIOR: TIME TIMER, THE BIG KAHUNA OF PRODUCTIVITY TIMERS

Seeing Time

Original Time Timers

Time Timer Plus

Time Timer Mod

Time Timer RETRO Eco Edition

Time Timer BRAILLE 8”

OTHER PHYSICAL TIMERS

Focus Timer® Visual Timer

Moaas Timers

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How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 2: Pick the Right Timer

WHAT MAKES A GOOD TIMER?

A Good Timer Must Be Simple

A Good Timer Should Offer A Bonus

A Good Timer Integrates with What You Already Have

A Good Timer Shows You the Shape of Time

A Good Timer Should Be Frictionless

A Good Timer Is Process-Agnostic

HOW TO IDENTIFY THE BEST TIMER FOR YOUR NEEDS AND PERSONALITY

Aesthetics of a Timer

Customizability without complexity

Affective Design Customization

One-and-done or loop-de-loop?

Discretion is the better part of timing

Picking a timer for someone else

Paper Doll Post:

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How to Use Timers for Improved Productivity and Focus — Part 1

WHY AND HOW TO USE TIMERS FOR PRODUCTIVITY

Use Timers for Productivity at Work

For yourself

For your team

Use Timers to Improve Personal Time & Daily Living

Paper Doll Post:

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Paper Doll Investigates Birthday Freebies: The Hidden Cost of Free Stuff

FREEBIES: A DOUBLE-EDGED SLICE OF CAKE

The “I’ll Just Spend a Little Extra” Trap

The “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” Effect

The Clutter Conundrum of Freebies

The Time-Suck Spiral of Freebies: What Is Your Time Worth?

HOW TO ENJOY FREEBIES WITHOUT THE CHAOS

Be Organized

Be Selective

Set a Spending Limit

Schedule Strategically

Turn Down the Guilt

FINAL BIRTHDAY FREEBIE THOUGHTS

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