By Joel Dare - Written October 8, 2025
These are experiments that I did for a short time.
These are my thoughts about getting organized and increasing productivity through the use of a traditional digital watch.
Listen. I love watches. Especially the traditional analog type.
But I don’t read time very well. This has been a problem since I was a kid. In early grade school I had to take home time based homework and practice. It didn’t work, I still take a few seconds to figure out the time based on the hands on an analog watch without printed numbers.
This often drives me to a digital watch with the time clearly printed. I’d love to be able to set the digital time to mountain and the hands to a second timezone, either UTC or Ukraine time.
First, a word about some features I found on a lot of traditional digital watches.
I’m a morning person. About a year ago I decided to wake up 2 hours early and spend that time working toward my side gig. I’ve been doing that everyday since.
How has this worked for me?
I’ve been stressed a lot lately.
I think I should try applying the Promodo Technique to my work. Work for 25 minutes, rest for 5. After four rounds, take a longer 15–30 minute break.
Or, try the 50/10 rule. Same idea but longer: 50 minutes of deep work, 10 minutes of recovery. These longer stings might work better for a software engineer.
I’m having this problem where I feel like I’m spending way too much time on tasks for a new job I’m doing at work. In my position, I also have a lot of meetings.
My plan is to start a one-hour timer, work on one task only, and stop when it rings. This will help me prevent sprawling work and will help me understand the actual time I’m spending on projects.
Even when I’m as busy as I am, I sometimes have trouble getting started or motivated.
The idea here is to set a timer for a short burst of time, like 10 minutes, then race to get started on a thing I’ve had trouble getting going.
At the end of 10-minutes I can switch to something else or, if I’m feeling it, I can switch to Promodo or sprints.
I’m pretty bad at staying up on my email. I like a clean mailbox but I have a hard time getting there.
The idea here is to spend just 15 minutes reading and clearing my inbox. That means moving things around.
I could use the FAT technique (File, Act, or Toss). You pick one of those three things to do with each email.
I have a notebook for work. Writing things down helps you remember them. But it’s hard to take time for writing during the hustle and bustle of the day.
The idea here is to open my notebook and write for 10-minutes. I can choose a topic to explore or I can just start writing. The hope is that the pressure of 10-minutes might boost my focus.
I need to move more. One way I could do that is to figure out how to quickly transfer a call to my phone and then go for a short walk at the end of every hour. Or stand and pace in my office. Or get on my bike. I might do this on a schedule. Are there digital watches that will chime at a specific minute of the hour instead of at the top of every hour? It seems like 5 or 10 minutes before the hour would be a good time for me to try this.
Note: There don’t seem to be any watches that support chime offsets. This might have to be an app.
Sometimes I don’t know when to quit. What if I use a 10-minute countdown to wrap up and plan tomorrow without drifting into overtime?
I set a reminder for the optimal time to post on HN.
Your watch might have timezones and it might not. To know three timezones from one you only need to know their offsets. Either from GMT or from your local timezone.
In Utah we are UTC-6 right now (DST) and we’re about to switch to UTC-7 for the winter.
Pacific is MST -1 hour. Central is MST +1 hour. Eastern is MST +2 hours.
Ukraine is nine hours ahead of MST. MST +9 hours.
Should I use MST calculations or should I use UTC calculations?
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