I fact,today,i actually managed to kick myself to do a little but quite obvious clean up of the kitchen space.

Interestingly,procrastination about doing something that has to be done,but that we think is not “stimulating”,”fun” or “gratifiying”,can resemble trying to stop doing something that we feel we’d be better off not doing but can’t help doing.

I think it’s both side of the same coin.

Habits are as hard to break as they are to developpe intentionally.

The timer seems to be great for guitar players, thanks for the hint!

For my everyday routine, I noticed, that forcing myself to stick to timetables just doesn’t work. Some people just aren’t made for 45 minutes work, 5 minutes break, 45 minutes work, me thinks.

Cool to see you blog again.

As for me, I would get quite annoyed by something like that. Some personal remarks from my side:
- To avoid desk fatigue it can come in handy, but there is way better designed software around that keeps track of your keyboard-hits, mouse movements, etc. It adjusts the needed (mini)breaks to the activities that you do.
- Tracking billable hours. Why not noting the start and ending time of your task (also if you take a break, write it down). It sounds pretty demanding to write the time down every x minutes. In the end you might write time in advance, so you don’t need to write it down every x minutes.
- Guitar practise. Okay that’s your business. No experience with that
- Procrastination. What’s actually the problem behind this? Often it’s about less interesting task that has to be done, but you don’t want to either start or restart it. Would it help to regulate it by using timesteps? I wouldn’t think so (you keep disliking the task and you’re constantly watching the clock). Why not by using deadlines about the content of the task? I want to finish this part of my task at x o’clock. To get it done, I think I will need this amount of time, including breaks, so I have to start at x o’clock. If you don’t succeed in the end finishing the task in time, you will get in one way or another feedback. You can then use it to learn and take actions to it. A usefull help might be to make your goals SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable/Acceptable, Realistic/Relevant and Time-bound) to keep track of your goals and planning.
As for the 10 + 2 * 5, it’s just so relative. For pretty numb work it might help as it kinda helps you to make it less annoying (you won’t constantly long for a break). But if that’s your daily business, why not checking out a new job which creates new and interesting challanges for you? You certainly won’t need a timer then…

Nevertheless, I’m happy for you that it helps you to do the things you want to do — which is after all what counts, isn’t it?

Cheerio!