Haunted Timer Tales

Hey yo. What’s up?

So, this month I’d planned to talk about summer, writing outside and why it’s awesome BUT, instead, we need talk about something spooky that happened.

I don’t know if you remember from my last post, but I was talking about how I’d just started writing full-time and how I was having difficulty managing my time and settling into a routine. (And pomados! Let’s not forget the pomados!)

Anyway, I modified the whole pomado technique (because I just love being able to say to people, “I can’t right now, I have to pomado”—not that I’ve had the chance to say it to anyone, but I practice saying it in my head all the time). Yes, so, now my version of pomadoing means I estimate how long I think it will take me to accomplish something, halve that amount of time and set a timer. Why do I halve it? Well, I used to have a boss that would set unrealistic time goals on tasks:

Her: We got a hundred boxes of stock in delivery. You have until lunchtime to get all stripped, hung and tagged. (“stripped” just means taking the plastic off—in case you were wondering.)

Me: Lunchtime when? Lunchtime next Thursday? Cool, I can do that. (I’ve always had a poor work attitude!)

Her: Lunchtime today.

Me: *checks watch* That’s three hours. There’s no way we can do that.

Her: Well, you have no choice because that’s when I need it done. *walks away*

Me: *flips her off behind her back* (see above comment about poor work attitude)

Her: I can see you in the mirror.

Me: I was stretching my fingers. Didn’t want to pull a muscle and not get this done by lunchtime … *slinks off to the stock room*

Now, every time I think of estimating how long it will take me to do something I always think back to that and her unrealistic goals. Because of that, I got into the habit of setting deadlines much further away than I really needed. There’s nothing more demotivating than setting a deadline that is going to be impossible to hit. Or one that’s going to be so tight, you get stressy over it. Life’s too short.

So I got into the habit of overestimating … and then I found this nugget of time management wisdom: “However long you set for a task, that’s how long it will take. If you set a week—it’ll take a week. If you set a month—it’ll take a month.”

Which is true (for me, at least). Even with this last book. I set the goal to have it ready to send to my editor a week earlier than the deadline. But that didn’t happen. I got it finished the day before I needed to send it off because that was (technically) how long I actually had to get it finished.

Anyway, so I halve my time estimate and set the timer. And there’s something about seeing a timer count down and thinking “Maybe I can get it done much faster than I thought”.

But, time management aside, the thing I wanted to tell you was that I have a battery operated timer (remember this—it’s important). Just a regular kitchen timer. I’ve used it for nearly two months now. It counts down (timer setting) and it counts up (stopwatch setting). I wanted to use it to count up so I could time something—I forget what now. Naturally, I pressed the “mode” button thinking that it would switch it from “timer” to “stopwatch”, but I found another setting called “clock” … and it tells the time.

I can hear you’re, like, “So? What’s the big deal?”. Well, the “big deal” is that it’s a battery operated timer! It has no way to know the time. It’s not wifi connected. I frequently take the batteries out so they don’t run down. There is no way for it to connect to the internet or anything to sync with to get the time. But it knows the time! How does it know the time!!? And, it is always nine minutes fast. Crazy.

I suppose it could be counting up from whenever I put the batteries in but that seems like a huge coincidence …

So, obviously, I channelled that experience into a story. It features two of my main characters and it’s free … but you have to sign up for my newsletter to get it (sorry!), but you can always unsubscribe straight away. Why can’t I give you a link where you don’t have to sign up? I promised my newsletter peeps the only way you could get it was by being a newsletter peeps—gotta be a woman of my word, yo.

 

Here’s the link: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/qujqdjo00l

Yeah, so that’s my haunted timer tale. Have you had anything like that? Let me know in the comments.

Until next time,

Jordaina 🙂