Procrastinators Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from chronic procrastination.

Simple "task timer" dings every 15 minutes

I'm sure there are lots of smart phone apps that do this, but I have a "dumb phone" so I was happy to discover this nice, FREE, desktop computer app. 

It's called "Task Timer by Clinton Begin" and has a very simple interface where it dings on the :00, :15, :30, and :45 minute mark of the hour.  

Instead of setting a timer and starting, it just marks the clock for you. So, it doesn't work so great for doing a series of 15 minute bursts with breaks in between, but it's helpful for when you're doing a longer task. Then I have a task for "tea break" and I do that for 15 minutes or so.

It helps to remember that time keeps going when I take a break, and it forces me to pull focus and pay attention every 15 minutes, to figure out whether I've lost focused or if I'm still moving forward on a task. 

You list your tasks that you want to accomplish, and and there's a row of bubbles after each task (like those old scantron tests), 4 bubbles for each hour of the period you say you want to work (up to 15 hours if you want to track all day). You fill a bubble for whatever task you've been working on. 

It's nice. And free. I like it.  

 

I like it, too!

Looks good to me! Piet, thank you for posting it! And here's the download link, so you won't have to spend time searching for it: 

http://clintonbegin.blogspot.ca/2012/09/emergent-task-timing.html

Another free minute timer

Here's the one that I use. It can be set to any number of minutes that you like, and pops up onto the screen when the time is up. The link below is to the Windows version, but they also have a Linux version that you can access by following the links.

http://www.pc-tools.net/win32/mintimer/

Thanks to pc-tools for the free software!