Life is much easier if you plan ahead, I’ve discovered on any number of occasions. I’m trying to do it more consistently, so I did make a plan for this blog post.
My idea was to blog about an app, Productivity Challenge Timer. I’ve had it on my phone for–probably years? I’d never used it. For one, I was amused by my title of “Unrepentant Slacker” when I opened it. For two, I didn’t know how to use it. For three, I didn’t want to get yelled at by a big guy with a hammer.
On Saturday, though, I went looking for a Pomodoro timer bc my phone timer is loud and I can’t change the sound to something less jarring. Since some of the stuff I need to time requires me to move around, online ones just aren’t as useful as I’d like. So I bounced around a bit looking at reviews, searched “productivity” in the Play Store, and wandered across “already installed!”
Oh. Right. That thing.
While I love to find new useful things (and imagine that FINALLY I have found the magic spell to Fix All!), I also dislike putting apps on my phone. I don’t want it to be so full it doesn’t work well, and I begrudge granting one more set of permissions because lork knows who’ll be looking at my stuff next…and I needed to figure something out and get to work, before I spent the whole day looking at productivity apps and then diving down whatever rabbit hole I found from there. So I did it. I used the app I already had. And it turns out, the big guy with the hammer is just an image! Nothing exploded if I messed up, figuring out how to work the app! And the snark is still great–I’ve moved from unrepentant slacker to persistent slacker.
Here’s how it works–in the free version, you get up to four projects. To start a work session, you tell it which project you’re working on and hit the button. The app rings a bell (not annoying, to me at least) after 25 minutes, and encourages you to take a 5-minute break. After the third (or maybe fourth) work-round, it suggests a 15-minute break. Breaks end with a (not-annoying IMO) whistle, like in movies set in factories.
So how well does it work? Well…Productivity Challenge Timer worked great most of the day Saturday. I got hours of work done on both the house and my Camp NaNoWriMo novel.
Then my roommate asked if it wasn’t getting hot in the house.
To make a long story short, after stuffing draft catchers in front of doors and changing the filter and poking at the thermostat repeatedly to see if it wasn’t just a little better, I resolved that indeed, the AC had quit working.
Productivity and all my plans went out the (now open) window.
So I can confirm, Productivity Challenge Timer doesn’t work when you don’t use it. That is a thing. Can also confirm that spending all daylight hours somewhere other than home for several days will really mess up any number of plans and routines and even vague notions.
How’s the saying go, if you want to hear God laugh…?
So, umm…have a really short blog post because I’ve been staying late at work because there’s AC there?
(also, what do you use for productivity? Or do you just go commando and Arnold Schwarzenegger your way through?)