How to use Untimer
A session from the first hold to the break, and the 4 screens around it. This guide covers each control and what it does.
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How Untimer counts a day
Untimer counts a day in 25 minute sessions of the same size. Here is what a session records and how the day is drawn. It also shows what changes when you count in sessions and stop guessing in hours.
Ask someone how long a piece of work took and they answer in hours. The answer is usually wrong. People measure an hour and rarely feel one. What they feel is an afternoon with a phone in it. They feel a stretch that seemed like 10 minutes and took 2 hours. The number gets made up afterwards. It comes out generous or harsh depending on the day.
Untimer counts a day in sessions. A session is 25 minutes. It either ran its full length or it stopped short. This article is about what changes when you count a day that way.
Sessions of the same size
Sessions have one length. Settings has no option to change it. That is the part people ask about most. It is also what makes the rest work. Why a session is 25 minutes covers the number itself.
When sessions are the same size, a count means something. Doing 3 sessions on a draft this morning means the same as 3 sessions on a draft in March. You can compare a Tuesday with a Thursday. You can look at a task that took 9 sessions and know what 9 sessions means. An hour of focus is a guess. A session is a measurement that holds from one day to the next.
The founder kept his sessions at 25 minutes for years. His old timer would have let him change the length in a second. He left it alone. His record reads clearly from start to end because of it.
Inside a session
A session begins when you wind the hourglass and let go. The sand falls and the time left counts down. The controls are Interruption, Reset and Stop.
An interruption keeps the session whole. You press Interruption and write a line about what pulled at you. The session still counts in full. How Untimer handles interruptions explains more.
What counts
A session counts when it runs its full 25 minutes. A session you stop stays on the record. It adds no time to the day. Each session that ran its length is drawn as one small hourglass. A session that stopped short is left out of the drawing and the figures. That rule keeps the count honest. The day shows what ran.
What a session records
Each session records its planned length and how long it ran. It records how it ended. It records the task you named, if you named one. It records how many interruptions you noticed. It also records whether each one came from inside or from outside.
A session belongs to the day it started in, in your time zone. A session from 23:50 to 00:15 counts for the first day.
Sets and breaks
4 sessions make a set. After each of the first 3 sessions, Untimer offers a 5 minute break. After the fourth it offers a long break of 25 minutes. That is the same length as a session.
A break starts when you press its button. The next session waits for you to start it.
People got the same amount done with fixed breaks as with breaks they chose themselves (Biwer and colleagues, 2023). With fixed breaks they felt more concentrated and less tired. The structure made the difference. Untimer makes that decision once. You do not have to make it at half past two in the afternoon.
Estimating in sessions
A task in Untimer is optional. When you make one, you give it a name. You also guess how many sessions it will take, from 1 to 6. Sessions you run with the task selected count toward it. That guess is the number to watch.
The task card shows how far along the task is, for example 2 of 4 so far. It has one dot for each session you estimated. When you finish the task, Untimer keeps your guess beside what it took. The card reads Said 4, took 6. The sessions you did not see coming are drawn after a line. With Plus, the Sessions by task panel in Insights lists each finished task the same way.
This is where counting in sessions pays off. Estimates in hours go badly, because people measure an hour and rarely feel one. Estimates in sessions go better, because you have sat through hundreds of them. After a few weeks your guesses improve. The founder’s guesses were off by about half in his first month. After that they were close. They have stayed close since.
How the day looks
Under the controls on the Timer screen, one small hourglass stands for each session that ran today. A line under them gives the count and the focused time. Press the line to see today by task, with the interruptions for each task.
At the bottom of the screen a strip draws today from midnight to midnight. Each session stands at the time it ran. The gaps show when you were away from focus. A sun marks the current time. A flag marks the end of the working day if you set one in Settings. Insights draws an earlier day the same way when you open it.
Active days
Active days in Insights shows how many of the last 45 days had at least one session, for example 31 of 45. It also shows your current run of days in a row and your longest run.
A missed day lowers the count by 1. It does not reset you to zero. Missing a single day makes little difference to how a habit forms (Lally and colleagues, 2010).
What changes
After a few weeks of counting in sessions, the day looks different. You stop asking how long something takes. You count the sessions it took. That is a count you can give. A long task becomes a number of sessions. A number of sessions is easier to face than a block of hours. A bad day becomes a small number. The number describes the day without judging it.
The founder has recorded thousands of sessions. He can tell you what a week of his looks like. He knows when his days begin and end. He knows what pulls at him most and how many sessions a large task takes. He could not have told you any of that in hours.
