Clocks are evil
Yeah, I really think that they are. Maybe it’s because I have mildly OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) tendencies so if there is a clock in front of me, I’ll check it incessantly.
About a year ago, someone told me that they got rid of the clock from their computer desktop, and relied solely on alerts to keep them on top of things. I tried it, and I think my productivity must have risen 15% as a result. Clocks are a distraction. You don’t need to know that it’s 12:30 and that it’s time to go to lunch or that you have only 15min of time remaining for you to work on an analysis before you have a meeting. All you need is to be alerted when you have to switch gears.
A natural question is whether or not you might want to know that you have only 30min to work on something, so that you can work faster. My response is that if you work at a pace that is different from what your regular speed is, you are prone to errors and outputting something that is less than your usual quality. You shouldn’t rush work. It leads to stress. If someone is asking you to move quickly, then push back or ignore them. If it takes you 1 hour to do something, don’t agree to do it in 45min. The result is more often bad than good.
The question arises as to how to set up alerts. I do mine in Microsoft Outlook, since I always have it open for work purposes. If I have a meeting at a certain time, it’s always in the calendar, but also if I want to go to lunch at a certain time, I’ll put it in there too. That way, I don’t have to think about lunch until I’m actually alerted. If you’re unfamiliar with Outlook, the program will just pop up a window and make a sound when your appointment time comes up. An important point to note is that if you have meetings on your calendar, and want to set alerts for those, you shouldn’t set the reminder to pop up 15 min before the meeting time unless you actually intend of getting up from your desk 15 min before the meeting. I generally set the reminder to pop up either right when the meeting is supposed to begin or 5 min before depending on how far the meeting is from my desk.
Great suggestions, great post and great blog. Time is the ultimate example of impermanence it seems. Attaching ourselves too much to time we loose the moment and before we know it we have wasted the day away.
Comment by James — December 19, 2006 @ 11:36 am
I have to agree with you clocks are evil, actually what bugs me about clocks is the ticking, talk about water torture. I use LCD clocks but the light bugs me in the dark. I love my vcr clock for years that was the only way to tell time in my home (took batteries out of all ticking clocks and set them at 6 o’clock, it really messes with people’s minds when they visit).
Whenever I am on a time crunch I use my cellphone timer, if I have 30 minutes to get something done I time that is how I survive my little war with time.
Thanks for a great post
Comment by Domino — March 9, 2007 @ 12:57 am