Customize Your Own Online Countdown Timer

Using some type of online countdown timer can help make you more productive in your computer work whether you're a student, business professional, writer, or graphic designer. Knowing that there's a clock ticking down in the background while you're working somehow makes you more productive and efficient.

An online countdown timer is useful because it can be difficult to maintain a healthy focus on your work, especially when you work from home. There's the television, friends calling, family members buzzing about, and sometimes the lure of a beautiful day outside (you can't stop looking out the window at the Blue Jays). A task that should take you an hour ends up taking you three. That's two hours you could've spent working on something else (or enjoying that beautiful day outdoors) if you had used an offline or online timer.

Getting a Custom Online Countdown Timer

Some people use their cell phone or stop watches to time themselves while working (usually in 20 to 30 minute increments). But if you work at a computer with an internet connection, you can just create and customize your own personal online countdown timer using a free service online called "Online Stopwatch" (see here). Simply choose a look for your online countdown timer (such as a standard stopwatch with digits, a bomb timer that goes off after the time you set, or an egg timer that empties virtual sand as time runs out.

Then you choose the sound-this is the really cool part of this tool. One thing that many motivational speakers will tell you is that you have to reward yourself after accomplishing a task. This helps motivate you to do it again and again. The online countdown timer can give you a round of applause after the time is up as a way of telling you "good job, now rest for a bit."

Finally, you decide how long you want the alarm to go off at the end of the timer. Once you've chosen your settings choose the option to get your link to your custom online countdown timer. The service delivers you a link to the online timer (with all the options you chose) that you can bookmark and come back to whenever you want.

Using the Online Countdown Timer

Before you use this online timer, study up on the Pomodoro technique or another similar method. Many time management techniques say that you should work then rest in short increments of time (such as 25 minutes to work, then rest for 5 minutes). Use the online countdown timer to stay on schedule-keep the timer open in a background tab so that when it goes off you'll hear the alarm, stop what you're doing, reset the timer to your 5 minute rest period, then proceed from there.