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minute·timer

Timeboxing

Productivity timer

Give a task a box and it stops expanding to fill the day. Thirty minutes is loaded here — enough for a real dent in most admin, short enough that the box holds.

Timebox

30:00

Shortcuts: space start or pause · R reset · F fullscreen. The alarm rings even if you switch tabs.

In short

Timeboxing gives a task a fixed length decided in advance, then stops when the time runs out. It works because of Parkinson's law — work expands to fill the time available — so shrinking the box forces faster decisions about what matters. This page opens at 30 minutes.

Default box
30 minutes
Admin and inbox
15 minutes
Deep work
45 to 60 minutes
Deep boxes per day
Four to six is realistic for most people

Parkinson's law, put to work

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. That observation, from a 1955 essay by C. Northcote Parkinson, is usually quoted as a complaint. Timeboxing treats it as a lever: shrink the time available and the work shrinks to fit, because you make faster decisions about what actually matters in it.

It works best on tasks with no natural end — inbox, tidying, research, 'just polishing' — and worst on tasks where quality is the whole point.

A day built from boxes

BoxGood for
15 minInbox sweep, expenses, messages, tidying the desk
30 minAdmin batch, planning the week, a first pass at a document
45–60 minDeep work: writing, analysis, code, design
5 minThe thing you have moved to tomorrow's list four times

Make the box real

A box you quietly extend is just a wish. Two habits keep it honest: put the timer where you can see it — fullscreen on a second monitor works well — and write down what was left over instead of carrying on. The leftovers list is the useful output, because after a week it tells you which boxes are the wrong size.

Questions about the productivity timer

Does timeboxing work for creative work?

For getting started, very well — a box lowers the cost of a bad first draft. For finishing, less so. Many people box the drafting and leave the editing open-ended.

How many boxes fit in a day?

Four to six deep boxes is realistic for most people, with admin batched around them. If your plan needs ten, it is a wish list rather than a day.

How accurate is it?

Accurate to a fraction of a second over an hour. There is no rounding and no accumulated error, because each update recalculates the time left from scratch rather than subtracting from the last figure.

Do I need to sign up?

No. There are no accounts on this site at all, which also means there is nothing to store about you and nothing to delete later.

Sources

  1. Parkinson, C. N. (1955). Parkinson's Law. The Economist, 19 November 1955.