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Clay

Among the normal array of equipment in David Allen’s office, one item stands out. It is an hourglass with two minutes of sand. Any clock would serve equally well to mark the strict interval GTD gives us to process something the first time we handle it, but Allen’s hourglass is as much a talisman as a practical tool. In a medieval painting, it would symbolize death. Here, the hourglass is a symbol of virtue. It regulates our attention. It guards our self-esteem. The guru of Getting Things Done is living by the standards of the future, and his hourglass is an icon of an emerging civilization whose exacting demands we may all someday be expected to meet.

-Gary Wolf

Like an 800 calorie bag of potato chips unwittingly polished off during CSI, we often scarf down large quantities of time when we are unaware. Psychologists have demonstrated that the brain has a terrible sense of time when it is paying attention to something else, and as a result, we are most likely to mismanage and misuse time when we are the busiest.

Just like decreased time awareness leads to time bingeing, increased time awareness leads to better time management, increased focus, and greater productivity. It also facilitates sustained attention. But how do we develop such awareness without a permanent fixation on the second hands of our clocks?

Make Time a More Visible Presence in Your Life

In an era where more and more things are competing for attention, our internal clocks are suffering. When an email program fills your entire screen, the computer’s clock is but a footnote. We need to be making time bigger, not smaller. If you don’t have a clock near your desk, then consider getting one and putting it in a visible area. If you have a digital clock, consider switching to analog: time is less real when represented by numbers on a screen. And if you have a small clock, consider getting a bigger one.

Making time is an important step, but productivity can skyrocket through…

Un-digitizing and De-analoging Time

Because time is so often represented indirectly (on computer screens, on watch faces, etc.) it can be easily ignored and seem like a figment of our imagination. Most clocks tell us the time but they do not give us a physical, tangible, highly palpable, and salient manifestation of time’s passage. Indeed, most analog clocks and digital watches make it seem as though time happens in one-minute or one-second intervals. But time is always happening, not just when the second hand moves or a number on your screen changes.

Time becomes very real when it is completely un-digitized and de-analoged. Here’s how to do it:

• Use a sand timer and make sure the sand is always in motion. The uninterrupted movement of sand heightens time awareness. With a sand timer, time doesn’t come in one-second chunks because the sand is steadily and constantly moving. Also, the act of constantly flipping the timer forces us to attend to time in a way that a clock or watch cannot. Here’s a rule of thumb: the shorter the timer, the greater your time awareness. If you really need to focus and stay on task, use a one-minute timer. I typically use a five minute timer but I wouldn’t recommend using a 15-minute timer (a mind can drift too much in that time period). Place the timer in a place where it will be seen through peripheral vision. The more distracted you become, the greater likelihood that you’ll forget to flip it.
• Use a pendulum clock. If the constant ticking of a pendulum clock won’t drive you nuts, then it’s also a good option. A constantly moving pendulum, like a hyperactive child, is hard to ignore. And then there’s the auditory tick of the pendulum.

Carrying a sand timer or pendulum clock around can be impracticable (although I have a tiny one-minute sandtimer that is plastic and uber portable). Here are some digital and analog alternatives:

• Find a Clock that Beeps at Customizable Intervals. For a while, I had a desktop widget that beeped every 15 minutes. Whenever my mind would start to drift or I became occupied with non-core tasks, the beep would remind me that another 15 minutes had passed.I experimented with different intervals and found fifteen minutes to be the best. Every five minutes and you start to ignore the beep. Every half hour and you tend to drift to much before being reigned in.
• Get a TimeTimer. The time timer is an interesting concept (see here). I have no affiliate relationship with the TimeTimer company, and I don’t own any of their products, but, I love the premise for their company. They claim to be “taking the idea of a simple, visual depiction of elapsed time and turning it into a line of products that helps solve time perception problems."
• Look Into the Maverick TM-04 Digital Egg Timer: I prefer watching real sand move, but this virtual sand timer makes for a good portable alternative. It is lightweight and can be set for different intervals.

May time be on your side.

~Clay

[tags]time is always happening, increased time awareness, time management, developing internal clocks, productivity, analog clocks, sand timers, pendulums, desktop widgets, virtual sand timer, TimeTimer, Maverick TM-04 Digital Egg Timer[/tags]