Using Timers

How much longer do I need to be in this place where I don't want to be?  Could be class.  Could be work.  Could be meeting.  Early on I knew where the most easily visible clock was and have worn a watch from my grade school years.  Not that I skipped the work.  I didn't.  I just preferred to use class to get an idea of what I needed to learn.  But unless a session was fully interactive, I did not like talking heads, blackboards, and slides.  I mastered the needed material better by studying or working on it independently at my own pace, where I never timed myself, preferring to think instead of the project that needed attention.  I never mowed the lawn or shoveled the driveway for a half hour.  I mowed or shoveled a section, then took a break, looking at the clock when I came inside. For interpersonal interaction, I focused on the exchange, which got me behind in most of my outpatient scheduling where appointments were set by a clock.

As projects became grander, done semi-Annually, often with amorphous steps, the clock gave way to the timer.  My interest in cooking mandated that segments be timed, at least as a guide, whether resting bread dough for its first rise or roasting a turkey.  The clock had less reliability than the countdown timer.  I've bought several.  For exercise, which I made excuses to avoid, the countdown timer made it viable.  I could walk around the block or I could walk on my treadmill for 20 minutes or for two ovals on the distance meter.  I chose time as a preferable metric to distance.

Cell phones changed the landscape a little.  They and PCs come with a timing device, as does my smartwatch.  How to use it in the best way remains in transition.  As I listen to audiobooks on Hoopla, the chapters are timed, so I know when the natural breaks occur or where I left off.  Not so for e-books, which at least have a variant of this in its display of how many pages until the next chapter.  

Still there are tensions between project segments based on performance and those delegated to the timer.  Write a page or write for fifteen minutes?  Read a chapter or read for twenty minutes?  Clean half the kitchen island or work on the kitchen for 20 minutes?  I prefer the timer, but set it as a minimum, continuing the activity if it absorbs me, moving on when the timer chimes if not.  

As I look at what I do each six months, I never quite get my book written or house to sparkle.  An expert interviewed by a journalist from The Atlantic offered a different perspective https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/new-years-resolutions-oliver-burkeman/672465/  She recommended setting a time not by session but by week.  So if I want to write for three 50-minute sessions, that's 2.5 hours in a week.  Set that as the timer, then apportion it in whatever suits each session, as long as the total obligation is fulfilled.  That may be a better way to tackle the really big stuff, the book I never get going, the rooms all partially tidied.  I sort of do a variant of that for my project planning, summarizing each Sunday what I'd like to pursue or the coming seven days, though too often without firm intermediate points to check off as completed.  There always has to be a Now, but there can also be a deadline such as by Next Sunday.  The timer works for each. 

I'll try this shift in perspective for a couple of weeks and see how it affects the SMART elements of each semi-annual project.