If you’re like me, it’s easy to get lost in …well, just about anything computer related. I can sit with intentions to read email for five minutes and still be there thirty minutes later. Or facebook, twitter? Yeah, an hour goes by so fast you’d think I’d time warped my way there.
But if I allowed myself to simply fly by the seat of my when-I-get-focused-I-forget-everything-else pants, I’d never get anything done. (And yup, a few of those days happen often.) I can multi-task like the best of them, but in order to do that I have to be uber organized. Not just with my tasks and To DO list, but with my TIME.
You can’t relate to that at all, can you? (I dare ANY writer to answer that with a “Nope, I can’t.”) So one of the ways I’ve found to help control my time and keep me out of obsessive-finish-task-to-detriment-of health mode is to put a desk timer on my desktop. I tried the little egg timer, but that click-click-click of every second drove me insane. That thing quickly landed itself under my shoe and in the garbage. (After a day’s diversion for my three year old.)
What I ended up with is a timer on my computer desktop that I can set minute intervals (it’s currently counting down from a ten minute interval while I write this) with a timer at the end. So when ten minutes are up, it dings (or in my case, I hear Joey from Friends saying, “How You Doin?”) and I know it’s time to move on to the next task.
Surprise of surprises, I actually CAN get through my first email box in ten minutes, with a few seconds to spare. Shocker. And I can write a blog post in less than ten minutes. Bigger shock.
But as a writer, it’s also great to give myself certain amounts of time, when I think I don’t have any. On a busy day, I can set aside five minutes (or fifteen) to do ANYTHING. So I can give myself a five minute clock to edit the last few pages of my book, and if I get inspired in the process to keep writing, that’s great. But really… who can’t devote five minutes a day to something?
So here’s my suggestion to you. Download the clock (it’s free) at http://www.timeleft.info/ . And then if you want some humor added in, go get some sound clips from this site http://www.moviewavs.com/. It has movies, tv shows, cartoon characters… it can add a little whimsy to the day.
And Joey just told me my time is up, so there you go!
3 comments
Okay. I just spent almost an hour on those sites. LOL! Great idea, though. Thanks for the links, Jeannie!
I know oh how I know I need to set priorities and move on but… I so hate to time myself. So I ask…do I need to get more done? What about thinking about getting less done? Or having less to do. I’m going to seriously think about downsizing my life. Like less things in the closet, less stuff in the fridg and freezer. Less to dust because of less of it to dust. And getting more organized so I only go to a place once.
With the kids all grown and only one cat and one dog (oh and one horse instead of 15) I know I’m in a different place than a lot of you. At one time I lived by a clock. But now I just want to enjoy things more and if that means doing less welllllll
Still I’m going to keep this post for the timer. Some habits are hard to break.
This is a great idea and sounds like fun, too! Thanks for the links, Jeannie.