I hacked my clock to control my focus
69 comments
·May 11, 2025KeybInterrupt
teddyh
The gods confound the man who first found out
how to distinguish hours! Confound him, too,
who in this place set up a sundial,
to cut and hack my days so wretchedly
into small portions! When I was a boy,
my belly was my sundial — one surer,
truer, and more exact than any of them.
This dial told me when ’twas proper time
to go to dinner, when I had aught to eat;
But nowadays, why even when I have,
I can’t fall-to unless the sun gives leave.
The town’s so full of these confounded dials
the greatest part of the inhabitants,
shrunk up with hunger, crawl along the street.
(Originally posted 11 years ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7007731#7008338>)
Y_Y
(Originally posted 2225 years ago: https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Comoediae_(Plautus)_-_Boeotia )
InfiniteLoup
I did something similar with a Telegram bot in order to remind myself to look away from the screen, get up and stretch for a bit. However I started to ignore it in favor of "more pressing" tasks and now the chime has become just a faint signal somewhere on the outer edge of my awareness, too easily forgotten about. You need to condition yourself to not ignore it or it will lose its effectiveness.
bmacho
It probably depends on what your goal is. To get up and stretch every n minutes, a more forceful approach could work better.
But a just an hourly subtle sound can *just remind you that time passes.
stryan
I have a similar thing in my WFH office where Home Assistant will play a chime during at canonical hour[0], plus it plays the Westminster Quarters[1] at 5pm to remind me when the normal work day is ending. I find the chunks of time match up well to work/eat periods[2] versus the granularity of each hour.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Western_rites ; for the work day the main chimes are at 7am, 10am, 12pm, 2pm, 7pm
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Quarters
[2] I originally stole the idea from the game Pentiment, which uses the canonical hours as it's in game time system since you're working in a 16th monastery. A web app version of the clock is at https://pentiment-clock.vercel.app/
hispanus
If anyone is searching for a way to do this in macOS, the dato[1] app implements this rather nicely
swah
When there is a meeting too starting at the hour, its a bit too much :)
TimByte
Pairing that with the on-screen focus prompt could create a nice feedback loop.
horsellama
talking about focus hacks…when at uni I had odd studying hours, often mixing day and night without any clear distinction.
What kept me grounded were scented candles. IKEA used to sell those with an expected burning time. My favs were the 40hrs ones [0]. My exam preparation was 1 candle for revising notes, 1 candle to go through relevant books and 1-2 candles to do exercises (exp for calculus and similar courses). Add 1 more for the final revision. I was constantly lighting on and off those.
[0] https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/jaemlik-scented-candle-in-glass...
tailspin2019
Can you elaborate more on this? I couldn’t quite understand whether you used these candles to “anchor” yourself to different times of day, or if you were just using them as kind of cumulative timers?
horsellama
I used them to keep track of time in a broad sense. Once the candle was on, my mind wouldn’t care about the time and could focus on the course work. I was offloading the time tracking to the candle (if that makes any sense).
It was also handy to know when preparation was done. Once depleted the candles any doubt about my preparation would be relegated into “impostor syndrome” symptom.
tailspin2019
Very interesting, thanks for elaborating!
FireBeyond
Doesn't that add up to like 200 hours per course for study? Two or three courses and you're at 600 hours study per 13-week term? 46 hours a week on top of your actual class load?
horsellama
sounds about right, I was pulling all nighters and had no weekends, holidays, etc
However, some courses were “easier” and didn’t require such effort.
Brajeshwar
A timer is one of the most underrated ways to stay focused.[1]
We have all been there where you are supposed to work on that boring but critical bug for the project, where a few other team members are waiting, but you end up booking a domain, building a landing page, and launching a waiting list. By dinner, as you are talking to potential alpha users in your community and start spreading the word, you realize you have not touched that bug.
Anyway, I like timers; the only complication in my Watch is a timer.[2] At my desk, I use a physical hourglass regularly. The physical hourglass helps me not be constrained by the Pomodoro-ish restrictions and work past the finish line.
For distractions (that seem important and sometimes are) while I'm on a specific task, I usually have my handy notebook, and I write them down quickly with a pen so I can return to them later. That helps me prevent launching ideas into landing pages.
Once you are good with a process/pattern, whatever tool you build/buy/use, as a timer in this case, helps your focus on your current situation.
TimByte
There's something about a physical timer that creates a sense of presence digital ones just can't replicate
RandomWorker
I love the idea of hourglass! Thanks for sharing I’ve ordered mine on Amazon today. It’s about a foot tall. This is also a great way to signal to other people in the office that I’m busy.
InfiniteLoup
>It’s about a foot tall. This is also a great way to signal to other people in the office that I’m busy.
Why do I now imagine a queue of colleagues standing restlessly at your desk, waiting for the hourglass to run out?
Brajeshwar
Yes, mine too is about a foot long. https://www.instagram.com/p/CkXmQWUpfKq/
xrhobo
I never thought of an actual hourglass but I do love the idea too.
Something almost ritualistic about it. I have to get one myself.
Alex_001
[dead]
gnarlouse
This is neat. Low cost, built from stolen parts. 10/10 engineering.
sheepscreek
Indeed! Using dconf to achieve this is very impressive. Is there a KDE plasma equivalent to this?
baby_souffle
Came here to ask this.
Most plasma widgets use a config file so this should be possible.
globular-toast
I spend all my time in Emacs so I implemented a similar thing there. Been using it for, hmm.. a decade now?
Org-mode includes clock in/out features and can display this in either the modeline or frame title (or both). I did the frame title because it's basically unused space otherwise.
I used to use this in conjunction with the Pomodoro method. I don't need to use that these days, though.
I can easily add a task to any project, or the currently active one, without breaking my flow at any time. I recently added an "immediate" task that will instantly clock me in for those things that randomly come up during the day.
The nice thing is I get a complete breakdown of how all my time was spent during the week. I need to report on this for current job so it's a win/win.
This is also a good example of why I use Emacs. I hacked this together in a few minutes and been using and building on it for years.
hallgrim
On macOS there is xBar (haven't tried it) and SwiftBar [1]
Its really cool because it lets you use any shell-executable file, including bash scripts, python scripts (with shebangs and made executable), as a menu bar tool. The standard output is expected to follow a very simple structure and will be used to create the menu bar tool's text/icon. You can have your scripts simply output emoji as well!
Not just that, but any output after a `---` will be treated as drop down options, and depending on format, those can contain info, or be exectuable actions.
Verrrry useful for all sorts of things.
bound008
I built a simple SwiftUI/Swift Data app to do the same thing across my Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad and Desktop.
With the heavy lifting of SwiftUI/Swift Data, and iCloud providing automatic and private syncing, this is the cloc output for my project, (including widgets and all of the code and projects needed to target all of these platforms.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language files blank comment code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
XML 13 0 0 579
Swift 19 131 142 548
JSON 4 0 0 115
YAML 1 7 0 43
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM: 37 138 142 1285
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you live in the apple ecosystem and want to make a simple tool for yourself, you really should go ahead and do that.
It started as a desire to have a "focus" on my Apple Watch at all times, and in less than 10 hours, I have widgets, shortcuts (and Siri) integrations, and syncing across every apple platform (although I haven't yet tried it on tvOS).
I've thought about productizing it, and I might one day, but that would add orders of magnitude to the time of making this something that people should be asked to pay for.
And I'm not going to open source it, because it is ~500 loc, with no libraries plus a bunch of Xcode generated stuff.
rcarmo
You could post a gist of it, though. I’d love to do the same thing.
bound008
I might do that at some point... this is the main part of it, just a swift data model and one file of views. Plus a bunch of example code for making widgets work.
``` import Foundation import SwiftData
@Model final class FocusItem { let created: Date = Date() var completed: Date? var theFocus: String = "New Focus" var details: String?
init(completed: Date? = nil, theFocus: String, details: String? = nil) {
self.completed = completed
self.theFocus = theFocus
self.details = details
}struct FocusItemDescriptors { static let currentFocusPredicate = #Predicate<FocusItem> { $0.completed == nil }
static let sortDescriptor = SortDescriptor(\FocusItem.created, order: .reverse)
static let currentFocusFetchDescriptor = FetchDescriptor(
predicate: currentFocusPredicate, sortBy: [sortDescriptor])``` import SwiftData import SwiftUI import WidgetKit
struct ContentView: View { @Query( filter: FocusItemDescriptors.currentFocusPredicate, sort: [FocusItemDescriptors.sortDescriptor]) private var items: [FocusItem] @Environment(\.modelContext) private var modelContext
@State private var isAddingNewItem = false
@State private var newFocusText = ""
var body: some View {
NavigationStack {
List {
ForEach(items) { item in
NavigationLink {
FocusItemDetailView(item: item)
} label: {
Text(item.theFocus)
}
}
.onDelete(perform: deleteItems)
}
.navigationTitle("Focus")
.toolbar {
#if os(iOS)
ToolbarItem(placement: .navigationBarTrailing) {
EditButton()
}
#endif
ToolbarItem {
Button(action: addItem) {
Label("Add Item", systemImage: "plus")
}
}
}
}
.sheet(isPresented: $isAddingNewItem) {
AddFocusItemView(isPresented: $isAddingNewItem, addItem: addNewItemWithFocus)
}
}
private func addItem() {
isAddingNewItem = true
}
private func addNewItemWithFocus(_ focus: String) {
withAnimation {
let newItem = FocusItem(theFocus: focus)
modelContext.insert(newItem)
DataManager.shared.reloadWidgets()
}
}
private func deleteItems(offsets: IndexSet) {
withAnimation {
for index in offsets {
modelContext.delete(items[index])
}
DataManager.shared.reloadWidgets()
}
}struct FocusItemDetailView: View { @Environment(\.dismiss) private var dismiss let item: FocusItem
var body: some View {
VStack {
Text(item.theFocus)
if let details = item.details {
Text(details)
}
Text(
"\(item.created, format: Date.FormatStyle(date: .numeric, time: .standard))"
)
Button {
item.completed = Date()
DataManager.shared.reloadWidgets()
dismiss()
} label: {
Text("Mark as Complete")
}
}
} var body: some View {
NavigationView {
Form {
TextField("What is your focus?", text: $newFocusText, axis: .vertical)
.lineLimit(3...10)
}
.navigationTitle("New Focus")
.toolbar {
ToolbarItem(placement: .cancellationAction) {
Button("Cancel") {
isPresented = false
}
}
ToolbarItem(placement: .confirmationAction) {
Button("Add") {
addItem(newFocusText)
isPresented = false
}
.disabled(newFocusText.isEmpty)
}
}
}
}rcarmo
Thanks!
wtkd
i bought a 30min hourglass. i wanted to do something like this but i can't be adding more buzzing, pinging, alerting things to my digital life.
kazinator
Someone working mainly in a terminal could hack this into Basta.
https://www.kylheku.com/cgit/basta/about/
The stock Basta puts a clock (date + time) into a scroll-protected status line, host name and current working dir.
Basta works fine on MacOS, but you need to get a more recent build of Bash from somewhere (Homebrew ...). I should attempt a Zsh port one of these days; the name wouldn't change, though. :)
TimByte
I like how it doesn't try to reinvent the wheel with some clunky productivity tool, just quietly enhances something you already glance at a hundred times a day
xgkickt
I use a chess clock, hitting the rocker whenever I get up from my desk, or otherwise interrupted. It’s been useful for quantifying how much time is lost during the day and allow me to “bank” time should I need to step away for a bit.
winrid
I like to set timers. I use the taskbar timer in xfce to set it to say 30mins, and then I work on getting something done in that time. It works really well. Not sure if this has a common name.
This was really helpful when I redid the FastComments admin area, as that was a big slog of UI work that I quickly got tired of. This was before Claude :)
I've added an hourly chime to my work computer's clock, similar to a Casio wristwatch. It's a subtle reminder of the passing time, prompting me to pause, reflect, and reassess my actions to stay on track and avoid procrastination.
I like this constant on screen reminder though and might give it a try myself :)