Working for 15 Minutes

 
Two-Minute Rule. A staple of productivity.  If a small task can be done in two minutes or slightly more, just do it. Despite my assorted annoyances with my current low-end smartwatch, it has an easily accessible two-minute countdown timer.  In that time, I can wash all four of the coffee mugs that fit on the outer holders of my dish rack.  If I want to wash utensils, I can do about two place settings before my wrist buzzes.  Watering my aerogarden takes less time than that, even if I have to fill up the two-liter harvested juice jug with fresh water.  Refreshing the potted herbs outside my front door takes a little longer.

Indeed, I can time most any task.  Not how long it takes to do, but how long I am willing to work on it.  My semi-annual projects for this cycle include things that have a lot of steps.  Slow and steady wins the ketchup race, the commercial from my childhood taught me.  Repurposing my adult son's bedroom will take many hours.  Boxes everywhere.  Paper dating back to grade school. Crammed dresser and nightstand drawers.  A desk that he rarely used but was my pride to provide it for him.  Electronics long gone obsolete.  That gets fifteen minutes per session on my timer.  I shoot for two sessions per week, but if only fifteen minutes at a time, I could do more without feeling overwhelmed.  And with the ability to sort things that he may treasure, his awards, birthday cards, special clothing.  Fifteen minutes of sorting or washing or discarding at a time gets it done over about three months.

My own bedroom gets only ten minutes at a time, two or three sessions a week.  I've already been able to vacuum my half.  Surfaces have started to appear functional, sorting just a few sections at a time while discarding very little.

My Space only gets six minutes at a time.  Not that I am unwilling to allocate more of my attention, but after six minutes something stymies additional progress.  But I can see more than an end point.  I recently recaptured my beloved Lands End Canvas Attaché, an indulgence purchase early in my career.  The Eddie Bauer cloth attache sits next to my desk chair.  It holds recreational items, mostly art.  And next to that I store a leather briefcase, purchased for $60 with the intent of looking upscale professional.  It's rarely been toted anywhere.  The cloth ones with neck straps captured the market due to better utility.  The leather one with its dual handles lets me see what I once aspired to have.  Six minutes at a time will bring My Space to what I had envisioned as what I would really do with a personalized part of my house, right down to my display of collegiate coffee mugs from the many campuses I've visited.  My many diplomas sit wrapped and in storage.  My Space has no reason to morph into a monument to myself.

My projects also include expressing myself in various ways as I move into the years of limited anticipated longevity.  Can I write a 90K word book?  If I set my timer for 90 minutes and write 750 words, it will add up.  

Other goals, or really systems to reach those goals, do not adapt as easily to a timer.  My treadmill sessions have a count-up timer, 30 minutes.  I set the intensity.  Stretching has a program of 8 minutes spread over 16 half-minute exercises.  I plan to host three dinners to challenge my creativity, social skills, and kitchen expertise.  Pulling this off requires steps, some like stove or oven times dictated by recipes.  I guess I could surf or read cookbooks for soup or dessert options using a timer, but this type of task I tend to work until the step has been completed.  I like going on day trips, having done one of the three intended for this cycle.  The timer does not aid in completing this.  Rather, I pick a day, destination, starting time, and return time, then do it as a unified effort.  Once every November, I deal with my IRA.  This includes allocation to charities working with my financial advisor, then a few weeks later, depositing the rest of my mandatory withdrawal in my checking account or a different investment account.  The timer doesn't properly segment everything.

But a third of the way through this semi-annual cycle, I've done rather well, even on my manuscript.  The short bursts seem productive, not at all stressful. Visible progress appears.  It makes for a good system to bring difficult initiatives to completion, something that has chronically challenged me.

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. 

Working With a Timer

I will work on this for 18 minutes and 18 seconds.  A lot of cleanup of a room can be accomplished in that time.  Exercise takes 25 minutes and 25 seconds, as does my goof off break.  Writing assignments take twice that 50 minutes and 50 seconds, with my mind usually petering out before that.  I rarely achieve Flow where time of performance disappears.  While do it until completion seems a better way to accomplish tasks, my interest fades more often than not somewhere during the task.  A timer makes for decent compensation unless the activity is both short and finite.  

My new GloryFit smartwatch has a timer, something its iTouch Slim predecessor did not.  Smart phones, tablets, PCs all come with timers.  It's utility has expanded far beyond keeping track of what's in the oven.  But still, it would be nice to occasionally enter a state of Flow.

Timed Tasks

Doing pretty good setting timers, of which I have several, for 18 minute and 18 seconds, mostly.  Sometimes 22 minutes and 22 seconds, which offers a compromise for aerobic treadmill benefits and protection of injured joints.  Rest and internet surfing does well with 25 minutes and 25 seconds.  But 18/18 best assesses my ability to sustain interest in what I am doing or defining an escape point for activities I must do but don't really want to.  This is not Flow, which I also experience for a few things, but the timer defines sessions to pursue my Daily Task List, and with considerable success.

Different Approach

Shabbos in recliner in My Space with a small break for an early lunch.  No purposeful activity other that to look at the various lists of projects and intents that I keep, survey what has gone well and what can be done better.  I'm not yet ready to abandon anything that I set out to do.  Minimal TV.  Did not bother getting dressed, even. No shower.  Chewed a melatonin tablet early afternoon to reinforce my attempt at a day's reset and redirection.  I'm reset, beginning with DST, for which I've had ample pre-sleep.  

I would like to try to work more with a timer, as that has added structure to where it was absent.  Starting with iTouch watch I set when I am not permitted in bed.  Writing projects get 40 minutes or so per session, house projects 25 minutes or so.  Exercise, already on a timer, has reinforced what I can do when I force my activity into a specific time block.

Social media is not yet out of hand.  Reddit on snooze, Twitter probably gone, and Instagram never was.  That leaves the FB sink.  What has been successful in the past was a spin of the roulette wheel early in the morning.  Odd number, contribute to FB that day.  Even number, just permitted to check messages twice that day.  I adhered to it, don't recall why I abandoned it.  Today's #5.

And pick the big writing and home project for the week, allotting extra sessions.

Sounds like a plan, an improvement over what I do now.