An intentionally minimal, unobtrusive, and low-effort timer to help me focus on deep work & flow state for long periods of time, without interruptions.
It's a simple web page, so you can use it right now.
Instructions are in the timer itself, so that they're easy to access while using it. Open the timer to read them.
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No Interruptions: Other timers I've used would interrupt me once an arbitrary time limit was reached, which is frustrating when I'm in the middle of a thought, or mentally juggling a complex problem, or just aren't ready to take a break yet.
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Control: Similarly, I don't want my timer to automatically switch back and forth between different modes of work and/or breaks; I want to intentionally & organically choose to switch when I reach a milestone, or just feel like I need something new.
Tracking the elapsed time isn't even strictly necessary, the core "feature" is just having an external & tangible way to choose to be in deep work, and encouragement to stay there. Tracking the time helps encourage a minimum amount of deep work, especially when I'm tempted to self-interrupt to go check Slack. I don't want to enforce a maximum, though.
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Low-overhead: I don't want using this to feel like extra work. I don't even want to bother tracking breaks, since that's easy enough to do organically. I just want the bare minimum necessary to help me stay intentional about how I'm spending my time.
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Not an app: I don't want to use anything on my phone, because then I'd have to see all the notifications that come in while I'm trying to work.