A focus timer that does not need your phone

Most focus timers are phone apps. That is a strange design for a tool whose main job is to keep you off your phone: to use it, you take the phone out, unlock it, open an app, and leave it on the desk for the next twenty-five minutes. Every glance at the timer is a glance at the phone.

If you work on a computer, the timer does not need to be on the phone at all. The one above runs in this tab. Nothing to install, no account needed.

How to run a session without the phone

1. Put the phone in another room. Not face down, not in a drawer next to you: another room. If you need to be reachable, turn on calls from favourites only and leave the door open.
2. Write one line about the block. "Draft section 2" or "reply to the three emails from Anna". A block without a target turns into tidying.
3. Pick a length you will actually finish. 25 minutes if starting is hard, 50 if you need time to get into something, 90 for deep work you have done before.
4. Turn on a steady sound. Rain or brown noise covers voices and traffic without giving you anything to follow.
5. When the chime goes, stand up. Five minutes away from the screen. The phone can wait until the break after next.

Why not just use Do Not Disturb?

Do Not Disturb stops the phone from reaching you. It does nothing about you reaching for the phone, which is where most interruptions come from: the urge to check, not the buzz. Distance handles both. A timer on the laptop is what makes the distance practical, because you still have a countdown, a chime at the end and a record of what you did.

Every new tab, a timer

If you want the timer one keystroke away all day, the Kiri Chrome extension turns every new tab into it, and the countdown keeps running when you close the tab. On Windows, Kiri is also in the Microsoft Store as Kiri Focus Timer. There is no phone app, and there will not be one.