TaskLights 💡

Medium post: Task Lights: Better Timeboxing with Lights

Like music, light (color) 💡 is an excellent source of information that the brain can process in the background. A more structured signal, like a clock or count down timer (24:13 minutes) requires our eyes to first shift focus to the location of the information, and then perform a further mental calculation to reason about the time you’ve spent on a task. All that extra thinking can be disruptive of our work.

Simply having the light on is a strong and constant environmental cue that you have a task that you need to complete. The color helps you be aware of your state: (getting started, need to really work, ok — wrap it up time is almost done). Fun trick, try reading this text and see the light in the picture below. Now, what about that 24:13 timer?