Start your day with an easy or difficult task.This will help you get more done much faster! You can of course undo this whenever you want, but I find that if I have a barrier between me and a site that will distract me, then it helps to reinforce staying busy. It’s an odd amount of time, but I find it has totally changed my workday. I personally like the 52 minutes of work/17 minutes of break. These are tentpole items that can’t get pushed over to the next day (even if they can!) Write down the top three most important tasks for the day.Put down exactly how long you think the tasks will take and use your new timer! If you’re thinking about how you can better set yourself up for productivity, then some of these tricks might work for you! For some reason, that is oddly satisfying. There are lots of these timers available, but I liked this one from Amazon the best because it looks modern enough to belong on my desk and it spins to set the time. I’m able to set it to a desired amount of time for heads-down busy work, then I get a short, timed break. Yes, some might call this just a glorified kitchen timer, but I was shocked at how much more I was getting done each day once I started using this (and putting my phone out of arm's reach.) This simple little tool has completely changed the workday for me in a way that makes me sleep better at night. I decided to change how I worked and it started with one simple product-a productivity timer. Some things can’t be avoided (like your cat coughing up a hairball during your zoom meeting or another package being delivered) but when you don’t actively make your workspace a distraction-free zone (especially if you’re working from home), then you’re going to lose valuable time. It got to the point where I couldn’t feel good about my work, and that was bleeding over into my non-work hours because I just felt downright guilty. I was on a repeat cycle of incompletion and lack of attention where it was most crucial. This is the mentality that set me up for failure, spending odd blocks of time working, only to pick my phone up and lose ~30 minutes to Instagram (I hope my boss doesn't read this!). I struggled with getting tasks completed as I’d often just think of my workday as one long stretch of busy time.

It’s something I constantly beat myself up about and part of the reason I have trouble sleeping at night. Nothing is quite as disappointing as getting to the end of the day and knowing I spent too much time on Instagram and got maybe half of my day’s tasks done. Scouted Report: This simple little tool has completely changed the workday for me in a way that makes me sleep better at night. If you purchase something from our posts, we may earn a small commission.

Work timer desktop