Best Timer: It's About Time, It's About ... Focus

I've recently begun reading Clay Johnson's new book, The Information Diet.  Johnson addresses that problem that we all face, namely, our tendency to interrupt ourselves far too often in order to look at email.  He believes that we aren't focusing on the things we need to be focusing on.  If he's right, then we might want to follow his prescription for increasing our ability to focus on the task at hand.

Johnson suggests starting with a timer set for 5 minutes (working on something other than email).  When I thought I would try out Johnson's idea, I realized that I didn't have a good timer that would always be with me.  So I looked around and discovered Best Timer, an iOS app from Smartphoneware.  It's inexpensive, it has a great design, and it does the basic timing functions.  The main screen is a clock, and you can choose from turquoise or red (or spend a little extra to get green, amber, or pink).  You can have your timer look like an hourglass with falling sand, a circular timer, a simple countdown timer, or a stopwatch. 

The alarm itself can be set for a number of pleasing or interesting sounds, with a range of musical types from techno to jazz to heavy metal to acoustic guitar to...well, you get the idea.  By choosing the right sound (and keeping the volume down), you're unlikely to bother your colleagues too much.

Does it work?  Well, I'll let you know as soon as I tend to this backlog of email.