Using an onscreen timer to boost your productivity and stick to the two minute rule.

One part of GTD which I find difficult to gauge is – how long is 2 minutes? I mean really, what is actually 2 minutes of work and what’s 3, or5, or even 10.

To help, I’ve been using an onscreen timer to time myself, triggering the timer to start each time I start work on a new task. I’ve been using Timer By Ten.

Advantages

  • Seems to make me work even faster, internal competitiveness?
  • I’m getting a (little) better at judging task length

Disadvantages

  • It takes up more screen estate
  • Not integrated into task tracking app

I’m not convinced this is the best timer available, but it’s the best I’ve used so far, any suggestions for an improvement?

2 Responses to “Using an onscreen timer to boost your productivity and stick to the two minute rule.”

  1. Danny Smith January 7, 2013 at 7:02 pm #

    I use Harvest for time tracking and invoicing. I track time on non-work stuff with it too. $12pcm is pretty reasonable.

    They have a great mac app that sits in the menu bar and a good iPhone app.

  2. Danny Smith January 7, 2013 at 7:05 pm #

    … It’ve also configured it to Cmd + Opt + N to start a new timer and with tab completion for selecting clients and projects, I’s pretty easy to start a new timer from the keyboard.

    Screenshot here: http://cl.ly/M0O5

    Link: http://www.getharvest.com/

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