I have long searched for the perfect timer, and have long ago given up. Because of the need for intrusive interruptions I still carry a Palm M500 which will chirrup as needed, but such timers just don’t work for dashes.

BigClock is an excellent timer that many people like for this purpose, but I’ve found that a better choice, for me at least, is Pocket Doan, a “meditation timer” that allows you to do such things as segment your dashes into periods, provides both a 2-minute warning and an end-of-dash note, and can be made to pause or cycle through sessions at will.

While I understand the original purpose of PocketDoan and its use in zazen, I find dashes to be particularly meditative in and of themselves, especially when they’re of non-geek stuff like housework. I like housework, it’s an affirmation that I care about myself and my family, but it’s frequently hard to convince myself to start. Choosing “clean kitchen” or “weed backyard” from the list of “meditations” in PocketDoan encourages me to get started, sets a definite limit after which I can go back to geeking (a reward!), and provides a subtle affirmation that what I’m doing is valuable and desireable. It’s up to me to add the well-articulated part by putting the action into the database in the first place.

As an added benefit, BigClock and PocketDoan are both freeware. BigClock is even distributed under the GNU Public License.