The Kitchen Timer is Key to My Morning Routine

The Internet generally makes fun of writers and content creators who start off their prompts with "a lot of you have been asking about [insert topic]" because it feels like such a forced segue into what they really want to talk about.

Still. A lot of you guys (except I'm from the South, so I say y'all) do ask me about burnout and balance and how I write a book / pursue journalism / read / etc,. without losing my absolute mind. The answer frequently wobbles and changes. I don't feel very good at it, and often—especially in 2024—feel like I'm drowning trying to keep up with my ambition racing past my ability. Not to mention taste evolution, which can likely best be summed up by this graph or Ira Glass's fantastic speech on the subject, which I revisit frequently.

Credit: Titus Lunter on Twitter, but unsure if the account is the original source.

Anyway, the answer tends to be that I do a lot of bobbing around to keep my tasks sustainable (or at least, enough) and each hobby feeds a reaction in another. My journalistic (?) writing feels very separate from my fiction writing, for example, and pull from different areas of my brain. When I'm stuck all day in a Google Doc, I want to do something active and outside, so that's how I stay active. If I'm too word-heavy, I want to make art and let the visuals do the talking rather than the prose. Each hobby has an opposite.

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I've realized that I'm smartest in the morning and get progressively dumber throughout the day, which means often I have to "eat the frog" or do my hardest work first thing in the morning. Luckily, I'm a morning person, although I've been a procrastinator/obsessive lately and stay up faaaar too late working. I'd so much rather write at 8 a.m. than 8 p.m.

I wake up, roll over to make a coffee, make my bed, check my email (I should delay this), open the door for the morning sunlight, and sit at my kitchen counter/workspace. But often, I find myself wanting to do my FUN work before my PAID work, which is why they feel different. Not that my paid work isn't fun, but I unconsciously resist authority so the second someone tells me I have to do something immediately, my brain doesn't want to focus.

Enter: the kitchen timer.

I think I bought this little gadget for about $8 at Long's, the island's version of a CVS. It has a red ring, a white center, and a too-loud ticking noise, but honestly I kept flicking through reviews on Amazon and got overwhelmed by optimal options. (Decision fatigue is so real; apparently, the average American makes 35,000 decisions per day.) I saw this one in person and shoved it into my shopping basket.

Good Cook Precision Long-Ring Timer

Credit: Amazon.

Amazon tells me this timer is $21 on-site, because they're greedy motherf**kers. So I'm not going to link it, but you get the gist.

It's done wonders. I have on my habit-tracking list (what I'd like to implement over the next month) that I'd like to be better about "eating the frog" or doing my hardest, most reluctant task first thing in the morning. Honestly, usually that's breaking down boxes, doing the deadline actually due that day (I'll want to work on it a month out but dread it if it's that day), and finishing up any dishes. If I set a timer on my phone, it doesn't feel as effective as using something physical and manual. It also works great for tidying when the apartment looks like a bomb went off.

But by starting the kitchen timer in my morning, I can give myself a "fun" hour or so—working on book, writing this very blog post, even reading—without worrying that I'll get sucked in, look up at 4 p.m., and realize I still have a full workday to complete. Otherwise, if I'm scrolling my email (did you know we'll spend eight years of our lives on our phones?) or avoiding, I'll end up wasting time that I could have otherwise enjoyed if I'd just committed to the bit i.e. given myself time to do something I wanted.

This flow-state has its pros and cons for sure, and my novel writing style very much involves throwing caution to the wind if I have a creative epiphany and rolling with it for as long as it'll let me. Sometimes I do have to ignore the work until later in the afternoon, which is why in June, I was consistently pulling all-nighters and absolutely miserable. But when I'm between revisions or trying to be a normal, routine-oriented non-author human being, the kitchen timer helps me stay on track.

Technically, I still have 25 minutes before I have to get back to work. If you're struggling to focus, I hope this (slightly obvious, but still fabulous) tidbit helps.

Books I'm thinking about:

• Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy
• Irresistible by Adam Alter

PS. I'm absolutely obsessed with my fridge magnets. Still building it out.