Timers

Mini-reviews: LabelWriter 400, Polder Vibrating Timer, "Beyond Bullet Points"

Merlin — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 11:48:53 -0400

I was adding a few items I recently bought and enjoyed over in the right rail, and by the time I was done writing the “TITLE” tags I realized I had three shortie reviews.

After the cut, LabelWriter 400 by Dymo, Vibrating Digital Timer by Polder, and Beyond Bullet Points by Cliff Atkinson.

LabelWriter 400 by Dymo - Powerful and easy-to-use USB label maker works great with OS X and makes gorgeous labels. A bit on the pricey site, but possibly essential if you want a friction-free way to blast out tons of labels for folders, envelopes, etc. An excellent step-up from the Brother PT-65. 4.5 Stars. [Note: purchase was inspired by comments in this recent thread, GTD with a Mac label maker?]

Vibrating Digital Timer by Polder - Still my favorite timer. Just bought a 2nd one. Flashes, vibrates, and cleverly switches between stopwatch and countdown (as well as HH:MM and MM:SS). Very highly recommended. 5 Stars.

Beyond Bullet Points by Cliff Atkinson - Really good book I learned about from mathowie. The first third or so of this book will likely change the way you think about presentations — for damn sure it will change the way you make them. By providing a structure based on time-tested principles of story-telling, you learn how to craft a logical, thoughtful, and very graphical presentation that skips the bullets and makes an empathetic connection with your audience. 4 Stars.

”Mini-reviews: LabelWriter 400, Polder Vibrating Timer, "Beyond Bullet Points"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 08, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

2 OS X timers to watch: Flextime & Meridian

Merlin — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 09:54:53 -0400

An alarmed timer is one of the most simple external systems you can employ, and many of us distracted geeks have come to rely on them as a way to improve concentration, redirect attention, and bitch-slap procrastination. Why make your brain be the time-keeper and scold when you can just make some little robot do all the heavy lifting for you? Exactly.

Lucky for the Mac-scented timer geeks out there, this is an area of software development that seems to be flourishing lately, with sexy little apps like Minuteur and Dashboard widgets like ProdMe arriving on the scene to ride herd on the wandering mind.

Further, in the past week, I've stumbled across a couple more new apps that look like promising additions for the time-addled brain -- and, I'm happy to note, they look especially useful for fans of the (10+2)*5 dash.

Meridian

Recurring Dream: Meridian

Meridian is a bit of a Swiss Army app for all things time. It allows you to create custom alarms, time-zone clocks, and stopwatches that can be reused and reconfigured quite easily. You can even create nonce events that happen at some time in the future.

You also get some nice display options, allowing you to choose how and where your alarms and clocks live -- in a floating window, on the Desktop, under a pulldown menu, etc. Also, in case you're getting sick of "Basso" farting your reminders at you, you get some lovely new alarm sounds to choose from (I like "Ventana").

I also like that the floating windows for timers and stopwatches afford a variety of actions and access to Preferences right from the teeny little window. It's also easy enough to double-click any window or clock and jump right to the Preferences and configuration options. Handy.

Meridian can be configured to pop up a notification window, which, thoughtfully, allows snoozing, although -- same beef I have with iCal -- I wish the snooze options were more varied and configurable. Also, it would be nice to have access to starting a different alarm right from the reminder window.

Meridian is a good option for running dashes and alternating work/play cycles, although it does require you to manually click each alarm session to start -- I'd love a way to "daisy chain" and loop cycles of alarms, something that our next app, "Flextime," seems to do fairly well.

Meridian is $19.95 shareware and comes with a 30-day trial.

Flextime

Red Sweater Blog - FlexTime Nearing 1.0

Flextime is in a relatively young beta, but it might be the most promising alarm app out there right now -- at least from a productivity geek's standpoint. At heart, Flextime understands and supports the need for multiple repeating sets of alarms. As the site suggests:

Manage the work/play/break ratios for the time you spend at the computer.

Practice a stretching or martial art regimen such as Yoga or Tai Chi.

Set up a metronome for rhythmic exercises such as dance or music.

Arrange for scripts to be run at regular intervals throughout the day.

Just about anything that follows a schedule!

This is accomplished by creating a "Routine" that can be saved as a document for reuse. You set up each of the timed events and how you like to be notified, and then let 'er rip. I love that the default option is to repeat the Routine. One less thing to think about and fiddle with.

Although I haven't had time (and frankly lack the skillz) to experiment with scripting, it appears that you can associate custom AppleScript events with each alarm starting or ending. Would love to hear how people are using this (and maybe see the sorts of scripts you're building).

While it currently offers a fraction of the configuration options of Meridian -- for example, you have to make the Sophie-like choice between a text notification OR a sound OR a script etc. -- Flextime should be an attractive app to watch as it matures. The developer has some interesting plans for post 1.0 (Growl integration, print support, and, via email, functions like sticky alarms), and he seems to get how people might want this app to behave.

Flextime is a beta app that is AFAIK free (as in beer); not sure what the post 1.0 license and cost will be.

Quickie wish list

For what it's worth, here are few things I'd love to see in a next generation, productivity-centric alarm app:

Create and control alarm events via Quicksilver
Control and change ~~environmental variables~~ settings and Mac events, per alarm (like changing Desktop background, opening/closing apps, changing virtual desktops etc.)
Track usage and allow basic logging to be associated with alarm iterations ("What were you doing?" "Were you doing the thing you were supposed to be doing?")
Easy way to create another future ad hoc alarm/dash when the current one completes ("Remind me to work on this code for 15 minutes starting at 10:00am")

Got a Mac alarm you're loving these days? What are you using to run timed dashes?

”2 OS X timers to watch: Flextime & Meridian” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 19, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Un-alarming timers for meditation and the (10+2)*5 hack

Merlin — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:04:37 -0500

If you're a beginning meditator, you may share my distraction of sometimes wondering "How long have I been doing this?" It's easy (and desirable) to lose track of time, but it can be worrisome if you need to be someplace later and are nervous about falling sleep or the like.

Commentor Ruth recently pointed us to Zencast, a site that does podcasts on Meditation, including an introduction to meditation series. Haven't listened to any of these yet, but I was pleased to notice that their first three shows of the podcast are just "timers" for meditating.

Each is an MP3 of 10, 20, or 30 minutes in length, and they each consist of a "Music for Airports"-like wash of ambient music at the beginning and end of the session and just silence in-between. The 20- and 30-minute versions also feature unobtrusive tones at 10 and 15 minutes respectively. Handy way to get time off your mind (a meditation hack?).

In a similar vein, don't miss Hernick's alarm-free MP3 for running the (10+2)*5 hack. As he says over on the board:

But syncing myself to a alarm? Urgh. Painful stuff. I hate buzzers.

So I invoked the power of Open Source: I fired up Hydrogen, a drum machine.

I laid down 12 minutes of beats; the beats synchronise you to the hack.

Both the mediation timers and the Dash tune are clever ways of having alarms without actually having alarms.

”Un-alarming timers for meditation and the (10+2)*5 hack” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 21, 2005. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Three OS X Timers

Merlin — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 13:03:36 -0500

I know I'm not the only timer nerd here -- check out three Mac-friendly ways to time your activities and make sure you stay on track.

ProdMe - Dashboard - Status

Looking forward to trying this, but the DL link appears to be temporarily overwhelmed.

Clock chimes return to Mac OS X! ProdMe replicates this greatly-missed feature from Mac OS 9, and also provides two additional modes for repeating audio alerts. In addition to traditional clock chimes, ProdMe also provides the option to play a sound at any time interval, using any of the available alert sounds. Great for anyone who finds that time tends to slip away faster than expected.

Features:

Chimes can be set at either arbitrary time intervals or synchronized with the clock (like traditional clock chimes).

Multiple copies of the widget can be open at once, with independent settings for each copy.

Choice of five different background colors.

Honors 12-hour or 24-hour time format (as specified in the International system preferences).

Konfabulator - Gallery - TenPlusTwo

Haven't tried this one yet either (don't use Konfabulator, myself), but I'm a fan of its inspiration:

Can't stop procrastinating? Force yourself to work for 10 minutes, then force yourself to take a 2 minute break. Repeat.

Leave this countdown timer running, and it changes colors and plays sounds to indicate what you should be doing.

Minuteur 4.3 - MacUpdate

Finally, in other timer news, my own timer of choice, Minuteur, just keeps on adding great little tweaks. From the version 4.3 update notes:

Add fullscreen mode.

Add Dock menu.

Add dynamic Dock icon.

The ruler contextual menu is now editable.

Fullscreen mode is pretty sweet if you want to run a timed dash but not let the allure of your Mac distract you. Just creates a big old black screen with the time counting down. Very cool.

And don't forget -- Minuteur's got tons of neat little affordances to control the timer, so be sure to read the "About Minuteur" section for instructions.

”Three OS X Timers” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 15, 2005. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Procrastination hack: '(10+2)*5'

Merlin — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 09:30:23 -0400

Following on the idea of the procrastination dash and Jeff’s progressive dash, I’ve been experimenting with a squirelly new system to pound through my procrastinated to-do list. Brace yourself, because it is a bit more byzantine than is Merlin 2005’s newly stripped-down habit. It’s called (10+2)*5, and today it will save your ass.

Who it’s for

procrastinators
the easily distracted
compulsive web-surfers
people with a long list of very short tasks (a/k/a “mosquitos”)
people having trouble chipping away at very large tasks

What you’ll need

a timer
- must be easy to reset
- electronic kitchen timer is particularly good (pref. with multiple alarm memories), or
- an app like Minuteur (get the newest version—several cool new features)
a reduced subset of your to-do list
- tasks that can be worked on (not necessarily completed) in blocks of 10 minutes or less
- GTD people: next actions only, please
an hour of your time (less is potentially okay, but it’s non-canonical)
your sorry, procrastinating ass

How it works

It’s called “(10+2)*5” and here’s why:

10 - Work for ten minutes with single-minded focus on moving toward completion on a single task. Ten minutes, and that’s all you’re allowed to do is work, work, work. No cheating, because (DING!) you actually get a break when you’re done…
2 - After ten minutes of sweaty, dedicated work you get a 2-minute break to do whatever you want—drink coffee, read 5ives, call your bookie, whatever. When the two minutes are up, it’s back to work on the next task on your list. This is important.
*5 - You’re going to iterate this four more times for a total of one hour’s working/breaking

Important squirrely rules

You do not need to finish your task or your project in ten minutes; you just need to move it forward
If you finish a satisfying amount of work in fewer than ten minutes, STOP, and go right to your 2-minute break, than start another 10-minute dash
Do NOT skip breaks! You are not allowed. Breaks cannot be missed. Period. Go surf the web. Now. Seriously. GO!

What will happen

You’ll blaze through an hour’s worth of work/not work and will find yourself looking forward to both the breaking and working parts of the cycle. (Dang, how’s that for a change?)

The MacGuffin

The Now Habit
by Neil Fiore

Okay, you caught me. That’s the hack: you can and eventually will skip breaks.

In his (extremely wonderful) The Now Habit, Neil Fiore suggests a similar habit of “unscheduling,” where you only make obligations to the things that you enjoy and that are not the source of procrastination. John Perry suggests “Structured Procrastination,” where you only give high priority to “unimportant” tasks. Of course, this is taken to a hilarious extreme with Joshua Newman’s plan for scheduling just a few minutes of work per hour, and then focusing on the “more important” tasks like DVD re-arranging.

In all these cases—each of which will surely seem ludicrous to the “Why don’t you just go do your damned work?” crowd—the trick is to snap your mind out of the inert state that’s allowing procrastination to take over. You’re breaking down whatever resistance has made you not do what your brain knows needs to be done.

Your hacks for your problems

“(10+2)*5” can be adapted in any number of ways (change any of the three numerals to your liking), but remember: these goofy hacks only work because you’re a pathetic bastard like me whose mind can be tricked into work as easily as it can be lulled into torpor. Set your rules, follow your rules, and keep moving forward. Snap that procrastination by slipping your work through the back door.

Now go take a break. You’ve earned, you hard-working hacker, you.

Related stuff

The Now Habit (Neil Fiore)
Structured Procrastination (John Perry)
Incremental work/play cycle (Joshua Newman)
The Procrastination Dash (43F)
The Progressive Dash (43f/Jeff Covey)

”Procrastination hack: '(10+2)*5'” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 11, 2005. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"