Thursday, April 30, 2020

Flow, a Mac app

Flow is a free app for Mac, a Pomodoro-style timer with a bonus: it allows the user to blacklist apps (thus avoiding distractions when said user is supposed to be working).

I’ve long used the free timer Tomato One. Tomato Two (macOS 10.15+ only), also free, blocks websites with an in-app purchase. One could avoid all sorts of work by engaging in an internal debate about what’s more useful, blocking apps or blocking websites. Why not retain both options? To my mind, the more timer apps and mechanical timers one has around, the better. Had we world enough and timers.

Thanks to Matt Thomas for recommending this app.

Related posts
Orange timer art : Ozeri Kitchen and Event Timer : The Pomodoro Technique Illustrated (A review)

comments: 4

brownstudy said...

Just saw this timer product prototype today on Indiegogo:

Ticktime-Countdown Manage Time Like Never Before
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ticktime-countdown-manage-time-like-never-before#/

I don't quite know what to think about it. Part of me wants it just because gee-whiz-shiny-LED-magnetized, another part of me goes, "It's just a timer."

Michael Leddy said...

That’s one expensive timer. I laughed at the idea of timing spaghetti with it — what a novel idea! But also — the timer is set for fifteen minutes. The Ozeri timer cooks spaghetti in half the time. :)

James Schmidt said...

Unless I’m mistaken, Francesco Cirillo’s manual explaining the proper way of carrying out his technique emphasizes the importance of employing a tomato-shaped kitchen timer: the act of setting the timer enforces the fundamental commitment to work, without straying from the path of productivity, for the full twenty-five minutes. Though the great man formulated his technique during the days before digital surrogates for tomato-shaped timers had become ubiquitous (and also considerably cheaper than the real thing), I’d like to think that there are still Pomodoro Fundamentalists who follow his instructions to the letter. Though, like others, I have strayed from the narrow path of Pomodoro orthodoxy, I have an affection for the discipline’s founding document and its tasty mashup of productivity theory, Zen, and Italian kitchen devices.

Michael Leddy said...

I like the idea of the tomato timer. I seem to remember one from FC’s website that was pretty expensive. The ones for sale at Amazon years back were junky. So I stuck with digital kitchen timers and a ticking orange. I just looked at FC’s website for the first time in years — the only timers for sale are apps. What?!