Developing a sense of time with Tasker alerts on my Android phone

Posted on February 12th, 2013 by Sacha Chua

I wanted to get a better sense of time, so I configured my phone to vibrate every half-hour in a short pattern of two quick bursts. That way, I can feel time passing, and I can distinguish these vibrations from message alerts. I used the following Tasker script:

Profile: Buzz time (13)
Time: From 08:00 every 30m Till 22:00
Enter: Anon (14)
A1: Vibrate Pattern [ Pattern:0,100,100,100 ]

After the quick buzz, I usually glance at the clock to confirm the time. It’s a handy way to remember that time is passing and that I should make the most of it. It’s not a big distraction. I can still stay in flow when I’m coding or writing. If I find myself wandering, I can bring myself back.

I don’t remember whose blog post started me down this path of making time a sense, but that was a good idea. (If you recognize yourself, please comment!)

More posts about: geek // 5 Comments »

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/24334

http://lamattgrind.tumblr.com/ Matthew Darling

That was probably me, when I wrote this: http://lamattgrind.tumblr.com/post/37333531344/northpaw-giving-people-a-sixth-sense

Which is ironic, because I originally found out about the Northpaw through you! Now I can copy this Tasker profile and save myself the trouble of figuring out how to do it myself, haha.
Douglasgpratt

Chip and Dan Heath talk about this in their upcoming book, Decisive. The idea is to set an alarm and ask “am I working on something important right now.”
http://profiles.google.com/jay.dugger Jay Dugger

This tasker script contrasts with Tagtime, an Android app (from the makers of Beeminder) that periodically and pseudo-randomly pings the user for a current activity update.
Pingback: Weekly review: Week ending February 15, 2013 » sacha chua :: living an awesome life
http://twitter.com/RaymondZeitler Raymond Zeitler

I accidentally came across Bodhi Timer in the Google App market. It comes with a bell and a Tibetan Singing Bowl as alarm tones, or you can upload your own tone. The timer can be set to restart, so you could have it go off every 20 minutes. It’s great, but I discovered that a cubemate might have tinnitus, so I’ll have to keep the volume very low. I should write a Java version so I can run it on my desktop.

On This Day...

2012: High school acceptance, yay! — J- got into the CyberArts high school program! One of the coordinators called this week to offer acceptance and compliment [...]
2011: Weekly review: Week ending February 11, 2011 — From last week’s plans Work [-] Start on new project involving Facebook and Rails [-] Work on [...]
2010: Wiki information architecture thoughts — Even though a wiki is a free-form, unstructured, organic information repository, it needs to be organized so that users don’t [...]
2008: You have received a painting from Sacha —
2008: Sketch: My first writing group —
2008: Taking quick notes for books — I love my book notes system. I almost always ask fellow bookworms how they keep track of what they’ve learned [...]
2008: Making arrangements for my cat — Trying to arrange my cat’s transit isn’t easy. Today I called the Japanese Quarantine Service. Not trusting my command of [...]
2004: Sean vs Sacha — Move Sean Sacha 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d3 Nf6 4 Nc3 Bb4 5 Be3 d5 6 exd5 Nxd5 7 Bd2 Bg4 8 Qe2? o-o 9 h3 Bh5 10 g4 Bg6 11 Nxe5 Nxe5 12 Qxe5? Re8 (pinning the queen; see position) After 12. Qxe5 13 d4 Nxc3 14 a3 Rxe5 15 dxe5 Ne4? (easy counter) 16 Bd3? Bxd2+ 17 Kf1 Qd4 18 Bxe4 Bxe4 19 Rg2 Qc4# 8| R|.|.|Q|.|R|K|. 7| P|P|P|.|.|P|P|P 6| .|.|.|.|.|.|B|. 5| .|.|.|N|q|.|.|. 4| .|B|.|.|.|.|p|. 3| [...]
2004: Chess — http://www.eudesign.com/chessops/ch-clear.htm
2004: CS problems — http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=riddles_cs;action=display;num=1068659376
2004: Slashdot story: how toy penguins and geek girls can help save the world. ;) — http://slashdot.org/articles/04/02/11/1855209.shtml?tid=106&tid=126&tid=163&tid=185
2004: Dutch — “zeg hoi” == “say hoi” :P http://www.taalthuis.com/course/beginners/index.htm

sacha chua living an awesome life