I agree with you on the sue of the timer I also admire your willingness to make your own - very proactive :o)

Using a timer is a great way to stay focused on one task and gives you the freedom to focus completely knowing that the timer will call you back to reality

I use several different types - I use a ticking one “chicken type” as in the earlier video like you for tasks which I want to remind myself time is moving on - so I don’t get drawn into things like checking emails/surfing the web for longer than I decided.

For 50-minute prime time slots I prefer a silent one and if I’m at my PC I use the free countdown timer available here:

http://www.poodwaddle.com/free11.htm

Other wise a mobile phone and wristwatch works just great for other tasks.

Have fun with your “time bombs”

Anth.

If you extend the title from discipline to its origins ‘disciple’ where a way of living is extolled you can look at if from a biblical sense.. and be a monk and wear a habit. It is a way of forming mind games with yourself if you like..

If you are biblically inclined, or even an atheist as I am, you can use the analogy of which disciple you are dealing with on any day or at any time, so you can form a habit based on an imaginary person - your own alter ego for the moment.

With Eben Pagan he uses time slots to do things and sets a target at the end of it, another way of treating it is to say to yourself you are [say] the ’self organising disciple’ for the next 90 minutes - what would he do? He would extoll the virtuous life of being self organised. Then you go about that role until your time with it is up and your mission achieved.. you can have as many disciples as you like, just don’t be a Judas to yourself. How to treat this is to attach the negative things that you do to that disciple - Judas, then if you see that you are slipping into Judas mode, you know the outcome will be nailing yourself to the cross, that is the result - a slow painful death from doing the wrong things to yourself, eg, smoking, excess eating, etc..

There are many other models of this kind of thing that you can employ to achieve your end goals, you can set yourself into the model of a military command system, where you alternate between roles of being the field marshall [planning and tactical control] all the way down to a private [who does the 'grunt' work] .. but take each role to heart at the time and be sure to act out that role with some level of vigour and sincerity - remember - it is for you. You assign a task to each rank and you time split between them for which ever role it is that rank carries.

Have you ever met a bureaucrat - you know - the ‘form nazi’, or the ‘parking nazi’, or the ‘paper nazi’?? Here’s another tack you can take with yourself.. a a for instance you can be the ‘tidy up your desk nazi’, where if your desk is not cleaned up within the next thirty minutes, ‘you vill be shot!’.

I had thought to put a parliamentary model, but that would most certainly be a failure - all talk and no action!!

These are all just mind games you can play with yourself to make things fun and to add some flavour to what might otherwise be a boring task.

Time bombs:

A good way to get things done that have to be done is to have a wind up timer with a reasonably loud clock system - one of those mechanical timers is good for this though they are becoming more difficult to find.
Having trouble making a decision? Start the timer and resolve your decision, surely each one should take less than a minute.. set yourself an obligation to start the timer and then make a decision - run a journal on it so you can see how many decisions you’re made, you’ll be surprised how long the list can get - 60 in an hour is good.
You can as I did make up a timer from an electronics shop - it isn’t that hard with a soldering iron and a 12v battery - see http://www.jaycar.com.au/productResults.asp?whichpage=7&pagesize=10&keywords=&CATID=&SUBCATID=&form=KEYWORD&ProdCodeOnly=yes&SPECIAL=&Keyword1=KJ8&Keyword2=KJ&pageNumber=&priceMin=&priceMax=

Hope this help,

Nicholas Tomlin. (C) 200901090636