Timers are great, they give you a unit of time to get work done, and then you break. You zone in and you focus in on that work to be delivered and voila you get it done.
It’s incredible that the productivity hack of our lifetime boils down to tomatoes and timers that give you a block of time to get work done (I have a few of my own and I use the Google timer at many a project).
But here’s the real value in all these timers (and it’s not the break) – it’s when you go over.
Yes, go over.
Oftentimes, I find myself using timers for tasks that are so complex and frustrating that I’ll turn on a timer and set it for 30 minutes so I can push myself to grind through it.
What I find is that this magical 30-minute block lets me get myself unblocked and I inevitably go faster than I thought I would, and accomplish more than I thought I would to the point that when the timer goes off, I either reset it immediately or keep going.
It gets you over that hill, that the power of the timers.
