By Joel Dare ⟡ Written October 12, 2025
A practical manual for using a digital watch to stay focused, move more, and manage your day like an engineer.
These are experiments, not commandments. I don’t run every workflow at once — I pick one or two, try them for a week, and keep what sticks.
I have a thing for watches. Most recently, I’ve ordered a traditional digital watch, the Casio G-Shock GD-010. It’s not a smart watch. It doesn’t have Bluetooth. It won’t buzz, sync, or distract me. I’m hoping that’s what makes it powerful.
I recently spent close to eight hours researching different Casio watches, mostly G-Shock models.
I have a problem. I know.
I grew up loving analog faces, but I still pause to count the hands before I can read the time. Homework drills never fixed it. A bold digital display does. I keep thinking about a watch that could show Mountain Time on the digital screen while the hands track a second timezone like UTC or Ukraine. During my research, I found one, the Casio GA-010, but I decided to go with a pure digital that has a few extra features and never makes me pause to count.
I want to geek out on my productivity a bit. I also want to get more use out of this watch to make it a part of my routine. I’ve been working with an LLM to brainstorm ways that I could use the watch to improve my productivity.
This is the system I’ve developed. It’s a standalone system for tracking focus, movement, and time awareness — with no apps and no data leaks.
This guide turns simple watch functions into a complete productivity loop.
This may be obvious but a watches first utility is quickly knowing the time without pulling out my phone and without getting distracted.
I use the countdown timer for deep work sessions.
I picked a watch with a 24-hour countdown. Most digital watches stop at 60 minutes, but I wanted freedom to run longer blocks when a problem demands it. On my phone I defaulted to 90-minute timers, so I knew I’d bump against a one-hour cap quickly.
I start with a 60-minute focus block. That keeps things approachable but long enough to matter. When I need a lighter ramp, I drop to the classic Pomodoro pattern (25 minutes on, 5 off) or a 50/10 split (50 minutes on, 10 off). The structure matters more than the exact ratio.
When the timer ends:
The timer’s purpose is awareness, not punishment. I’m training my attention span to hold steady on one thing at a time. I’m also trying to prevent myself from lingering on a hard problem too long. It’s often better to step away and come back to it.
My work in software engineering has me working on “stories”. Stories are ticket-based slices of work. We don’t follow the Scrum framework exactly; we lean toward Basecamp’s Shape Up model. But our tooling is still story-centric, so I have to put boundaries around my time or everything sprawls.
Before starting a story, I set a 90-minute limit. When the timer ends, I reassess — split the work, delegate, or extend on purpose.
If a project is already running hot, I drop the window to a one-hour sprint. That’s my reality check when I’m juggling meetings and support work. The timer keeps me from letting one ticket swallow the afternoon.
After each story:
Each story becomes a distinct chapter in my day. Boundaries turn chaos into rhythm.
At the start of each countdown session or story, I set Slack to “Away” for an hour or 90-minutes, matching my session time. That’s a couple clicks in the desktop app matched with a couple button presses on my watch. The physical motion anchors the commitment: Slack quiets down, the timer starts, and my attention narrows.
Slack automatically switches back to “Available.” Coworkers learn the rhythm without a status post. It’s my mechanical toggle for attention.
Switching time zones becomes a ritual of focus.
This particular watch supports four time zones. That was one of the deciding features. Many other watches have a world time, where you can switch between times quickly, but they often hide the secondary zones behind menus. On the GD-010, I get quick taps. I set mine to Utah (DEN), Southern California and Las Vegas (LAX), UTC, and Ukraine (MOS).
I use the slots as mental frames:
I start the stopwatch when I trigger a build and stop it when it finishes. I jot the duration once per day. After a week, patterns pop out — which CI jobs drag, which environments are flaky, and how much of my day evaporates while I wait.
Of course it’s not just build times. I can track anything that I’m evaluating right now or that’s important to me.
I set my earliest alarm two hours before my day job starts. That block is sacred side-project time. When I made the change, my newsletter climbed to 450 subscribers and my Etsy shop briefly hit $250 per month. The watch nudges me out of bed before I have a chance to renegotiate with myself.
I’ve also experimented with setting alarms throughout the day to keep me focused without staying still too long.
| Time | Purpose | Action |
|---|---|---|
| 8:00 | Start Work | Plan, clear inbox |
| 10:00 | Mid-Morning Break | Stretch or walk |
| 12:00 | Lunch | Step away |
| 2:00 | Balance Check | QA / Auto-QA / RR review |
| 5:00 | Wrap-Up | Log notes, prep tomorrow |
These alarms are my scaffolding. They keep the day structured even when the work shifts wildly.
I run three 45-minute countdowns back-to-back for my main priorities. In my role that means cycling through the departments I manage. Your mix will look different, but the rule is the same: when the timer ends, I shift to the next priority. The rotation keeps me from over-investing in one area and neglecting another.
I use this in combination with others, such as Time Based Stories. I’ll work on a story or issue for a period and then switch to planning or organization of a second area of focus.
I’ll figure out the time mix that works the best for me as I go and I’ll probably switch it up regularly.
I switch to MOS (Moscow time, which matches my teammates in Ukraine) when we pair program. I start the stopwatch at “hello” and stop it at “good wrap.” After each session I sometimes note:
The notes are meant to help me schedule future overlap when we’re sharp and to prevent working until we’re too tired.
When I struggle to start, I set a 10-minute countdown and race myself. The rule is simple: show up until the alarm rings.
If I’m still resisting when it beeps, I walk away without guilt because I honored the sprint. If I’m engaged, I restart for another 20–30 minutes and slide into a longer block. It’s my antidote to inertia.
I start the stopwatch before I step outside for a walking one-on-one. I aim for 15 minutes — long enough to reset my brain without derailing the schedule. I practice transferring the call from my laptop to my phone ahead of time so the transition feels smooth when the alarm nudges me. After a few loops, my body starts recognizing what “15 minutes” feels like without looking.
I keep a daily page in my handwritten notebook (I use a Kindle Scribe) labeled with the date. At the start of the first countdown session I:
At the end of the day I skim the page and circle one takeaway. Over time the notebook turns into a manual performance log — analog data synced with digital rhythms.
When I travel or go offline, I lean on alarms for anything I’d normally track in a calendar app:
No data connection required. It’s just a reliable chime that makes sure I don’t miss the moment.
When it’s time to wrap-up, I start a 10-minute countdown. That’s my shutdown ritual. Within that window I:
Before I stop the countdown, I write that improvement on the next notebook page so I end on intent instead of autopilot.
For a 30-minute meeting, I set a 25-minute timer. When it rings, I shift to decisions and summary notes. It teaches the room to expect closure instead of drift.
I think I’m a morning person but I’ve got an idea to understand when I’m most productive.
For one week, I’ll log the start time of each focus session in my notebook and rate my energy on a scale from 1–5 when it ends.
After the week, I’ll graph it. The peaks should show my natural “power hours.” Those blocks should get reserved for code, not meetings.
When a story overruns its 90-minute box, I start the stopwatch for the overtime segment and label it “Time Debt” in my notes. At week’s end I add them up. The repeat offenders jump off the page.
I’m trying to understand the issues that take more time than they deserve.
I run a repeating time block. Something like:
The countdown timer covers the first two phases, then I switch to the stopwatch for the walk. It blends productivity with movement without needing an app to nag me.
On Friday afternoon I:
It’s how I start Monday clean, with both physical and digital spaces aligned.
I am brutal about email for 15 minutes at a time. I set a countdown and work through messages using the FAT method: File it where it belongs, Act on it if it takes less than a couple minutes, or Toss it so it stops nagging me. The watch keeps me honest. When the alarm sounds, I stop, even if I’m mid-thread. That rhythm is the only way I keep my inbox from ballooning.
When my notebook stays blank for too long, I start a 10-minute timer and write. Sometimes I choose a prompt; other times I dump whatever’s in my head. The constraint forces me to sit still and think. Ten minutes isn’t enough to get scared, but it is enough to produce ideas I wouldn’t have captured otherwise.
I read mostly short, non-fiction books. I like ones I can finish in a week or two.
When I picked up Deep Work by Cal Newport, my Kindle estimated 4 hours and 7 minutes (247 minutes). I broke that into 30-minute blocks. If I hit one block per day, I’ll finish in about eight sessions. Some days I run longer; other days the timer rings right when life interrupts.
I’m still figuring out how accurate the Kindle pacing is for me. I’ve always thought of myself as a slow reader, so I’m using the watch to gather data.
For this book (and maybe a few more) I’m not allowing myself to bail early. I want a baseline before I go back to allowing myself to abandon a book that bores me. A practice I generally allow myself so that I spend more time reading things I enjoy rather than slogging through a book.
This watch doesn’t need to be smart — I do. Each beep and reset is my cue to return to presence.
Paired with a paper notebook and a few mindful toggles (like Slack “Away”), I’m hoping the traditional digital watch becomes my complete system for conscious work — no cloud required.
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