I recently received this beautiful MoMA Colorplay Hourglass as a gift from a good friend who lives in NYC and could not be happier with it. While you can’t buy the exact one on Amazon, you can get similar hourglasses. Read on to find out what I really like about it.
First, the sand timer has been very useful for keeping me on task for short periods of time. The timer contains three minutes worth of sand, usually enough for responding to most emails and maintaining peak efficiency. I find myself starting with one turn and continuing to flip until I run out of energy or am doing a task that takes longer than three minutes.You can get it in bigger sizes for longer time intervals. I’m considering getting another one to time out 15 minutes. Second, the timer is really great looking. It definitely has a MoMA feel to it. Third, the tactile and physical nature of the timer makes it something that is more likely to get a behavioral change out of me. The iPhone timer just can’t compare to it.
Really really happy that I received this as a gift. I’ve found that it helps me stick to single-tasking on things I need to get done efficiently. I’ve been writing on these productivity and efficiency topics (here’s one on the dangers of multi-tasking) over at Grove Ave and hope to be able to build in this sand timer tip into future iterations of our productivity guide.
Do you have a preferred tactic for boosting your efficiency? Got a timer like this one? If so, leave us a comment below!