Why a 10 minute timer could be the best thing to happen to your career
There are plenty of ways you already use a timer: for your dinner recipes, to put your kiddo in timeout, to track the laundry, and so on. But have you ever thought about packing that timer with you for the office, alongside your lunchbox? Even if you use your phone instead, time blocking your schedule can be a powerful way to transform your habits and performance. As career expert for TopResume Amanda Augustine explains, a 10-minute timer prevents us from going on the many, many rabbit holes professionals wander down. “Thinking you’re going to do a ‘quick online search for something’ can turn into hours of wasted surfing if you’re not careful, and a timer may be just the reminder you need to stick to your original plan for the workday,” she explains.
Experts outline why a 10-minute timer could be the best thing to happen to your career:
You’ll be more productive
Think about when you have a task on your docket for the day. You’ve done it before, you’ll do it again, but for whatever reason, you’ll twiddling your thumbs and delaying getting started. Sometimes, not knowing exactly how long something will take is maddening, and can be a hurdle to the beginning. That’s where a 10-minute timer comes in super-handy, according to Augustine, she says simply turning one on will make you more productive. “When you guesstimate how long something will take without setting a timer, the task will likely take longer than you initially anticipated,” she explains. “When you set a timer, the amount of work you produce will increase and the time in which it takes you to complete each item will decrease.”
You will be more effective and efficient
With a 10-minute timer, you can have various cycles, allowing you to work for longer if you need it. The idea though is that once you hit ‘start’, you don’t look at it again (or anything else) until it buzzes. When we get used to timed work sessions, industrial-organizational psychology practitioners and workplace expert Amy Cooper Hakim, Ph.D. says we tend to perform more effectively and efficiently. This is especially true for those dreaded tasks that we absolutely have to do, even if we hate it. “Commit to working solidly for that set amount of time before taking a break. You will likely accomplish more in that short time than you would if you did not set a timer,” she explains. “Be sure to reward yourself with a break when you hear the buzzer.”
You will be better at delegating
To become a successful leader, you must, well, lead. And part of that is understanding the value you bring to a team and what deliverables you’re better off assigning to others who can master them better than you can. If you struggle with delegation, Augustine says a 10-minute timer can come in handy. As she explains, if there’s a task on your to-do list that someone else can do in 10 minutes or less, consider asking that person to help. “This works especially well if you manage others, as these opportunities may help your staff learn, grow, and advance at the company while giving back time on your calendar — it’s a win-win,” she explains.
You’ll have a better attitude with projects.
It’s one thing to have an all-consuming task that’s due in twelve months and another to procrastinate it, and have six weeks left to finish everything. When presented with a project that feels impossible, but has a large lead time, 10-minute timers teach us how to break up deliverables into bite-sized — and thus, comprehensible — segments. “When your plan is organized into smaller, more digestible chunks of time, you’re less likely to become overwhelmed,” Augustine explains. “As a result, you’re also more likely to make progress on an initiative when you divide it in this manner.”
Your focus will be laser-sharp
If you’re a parent, you know how much you can get done with your child is napping. Or, if you’re an entrepreneur, you know those wee hours of the morning are void of distractions, and allow you to be productive. While you aren’t exactly using a 10-minute timer for these moments, you can recreate that laser-sharp focus by using one. “It’s no secret that humans have short attention spans. The longer we work on an item, the less focused we become,” Augustine explains. “By limiting the time you spend on each task — and scheduling short breaks throughout the day — you will find a greater focus to tackle your to-do list with gusto!”
I Did 10 Minutes Of Yoga Every Day For A Month, And This Is What Happened
Kasandra Brabaw
For nearly 6 months, all I talked about was doing yoga. "My back hurts when I wake up," I'd say. Or "God, my posture is terrible!" These exclamations were inevitably followed by "I'm going to try yoga—maybe that'll help."
But I didn't. Sure, I talked about doing yoga every day. I even took the opportunity to snag a yoga mat and a few yoga DVDs from a coworker who was cleaning out her office, but I didn't actually do yoga. (Attention fellow time-challenged folks: Prevention's Get Fit in 10: Slim and Strong for Life serves up 10-minute workouts and 10-minute meals for serious, undeniable results. Try it for FREE today!)
After getting off work at 6:00 PM, taking the hour-and-a-half-long subway ride home, making dinner, eating dinner, doing dishes, and getting myself ready for work the next day, I'd glance at my yoga mat gathering dust in the corner and flop into bed to watch Netflix instead.
Eventually, I got tired of saying the same thing over and over again (and I'm sure my friends got tired of hearing it). So to make myself accountable, I told my editor I'd volunteer to do a whole month of yoga, at least 10 minutes every day, and write about it. I found some online yoga classes to stream and diligently followed along. Here's what I learned.
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Bending myself into a pretzel wasn't the hardest part.
I went into this ready for my muscles to scream at me and for my body to yell, "I just can't bend that way!" Which, to be honest, it sometimes did. But it came as a total shock to me that the hardest part wasn't trying to stand on one leg while I held my ankle in one hand and pointed toward the wall with the other (a pose I was finally able to accomplish by the end of the month!). It was breathing. (These 3 "wow" yoga poses aren't as hard as they look; here's how to master them.)
Practicing yoga is as much about being aware of your breath as it is twisting your body into different shapes. Breathing deeply in and out of your nose supposedly helps you melt deeper into a stretch, while also aiding in stress reduction, lowering blood pressure, and lifting your mood, yoga instructor Kristin McGee writes on her blog. But it was surprisingly hard to match my inhales and exhales to my movements. At the end of the month, I still haven't mastered it.
I do have time for yoga.
My biggest complaint, that I was just too busy to do yoga regularly, went right out the window when all I had to commit to was 10 minutes. When it was an hour-long yoga video I was planning to do every day, those excuses were valid, but 10 minutes on my yoga mat was nothing. Even on days when I didn't have time to settle down until 10:00 or 11:00 at night, I could still stretch before bed. This is a good lesson that goes beyond yoga—making time for something that's important isn't actually impossible.
Sometimes your body gets in the way—and that's fine.
I'm short, I'm fat, and I was able to pull off a month of yoga with almost no problems. So just toss your idea of a perfect "yoga body" in the trash—anyone can do yoga, even if they need to make modifications to some poses. That said, there were some poses that just seemed impossible if you weren't a tall, skinny 20-something. When I watched one of these tall, skinny, 20-somethings perform a routine on day 15, I wasn't expecting the "basic" yoga flow to be so hard. "I couldn't reach my thighs," I wrote in my notes for that day. "Do you need to have a certain body proportion to accomplish this?" The answer? Yeah, probably. While some of nailing down a pose comes with practice, yoga instructor Rosanna Gordon wrote on her blog that your body shape and bone structure can make a big difference in how well you can do certain poses. Sometimes you won't be able to perfect a pose, and that's perfectly fine—just modify it so it works best for your body. (These 11 ways to make yoga easier at any size can help.)
You can do it literally anywhere.
It was day nine, 11:00 at night when I popped up from my bed in sudden realization: "I didn't do yoga!" Instead of getting out of my warm, comfy bed, pulling on yoga pants, and rolling out my mat for a good 10 minutes of stretches, I typed into Google "yoga you can do in..." and the first thing that popped up in the search bar was "yoga you can do in bed." I'm not the only lazy yogi out there! Not so surprisingly, yoga in bed was the most relaxing routine I'd done yet—and stretching my muscles before turning in helped me sleep better that night. I did bed yoga three more times throughout the month.
But my bed wasn't the only unconventional place I got my om on. Every Friday night, I head to the bar with three of my good friends. I talk, I drink (a little), I play pool (badly), and then I fall into bed exhausted sometime around 1:00 in the morning. That leaves no time for 10 minutes of yoga. So instead of waiting until I got home like I did every other night, I closed my office door toward the end of the workday and found a simple yoga video to do in my desk chair. Though the routines were nothing too intense (you're not going to do downward-facing dog from a chair, let's be honest), they actually gave me more of a stretch than I was expecting, and helped loosen up my back from sitting all day. (You can do these 5 restorative next stretches while sitting down.)
There's no need to empty your bank account.
Other than not having time, my biggest worry about starting this yoga experiment was whether I'd have to spend a lot of money on clothes and gear. Yoga blocks? I didn't have them. Yoga pants? Do my leggings count? Turns out, I didn't need any of that stuff. Most nights I just did my routine in whatever I was going to wear to bed—space-themed pants, stretchy shorts, sweat pants, even my underwear. And there was only one time a video asked me to grab my yoga blocks. My solution? Two big books about string theory and black holes—thank you, physics.
Even when you think you're relaxed, you're not really relaxed.
When the company I work for rolled out a Wellness Wednesdays program that included a free hour-long yoga class, I was one of the first to sign up. It was the only time during the month that I 1) did more than 10 minutes of yoga in one day, and 2) did yoga with an actual instructor in the room. Toward the end of the class, when we were supposed to be winding down in corpse pose, the instructor came over to me and told me to lay my head in her hands. "Relax," she said. And then she said it again. And again. I felt my muscles loosen a little bit each time she asked me to relax, but then she'd say it again and I realized that I was still incredibly tense. Though corpse pose seems like the easiest pose in yoga (you're just lying on the floor, right?!), it was actually really difficult to let my muscles rest. After the third "OK, you can relax," as my muscles finally loosened, I felt something I haven't felt in a long time—completely and totally calm. (These 5 gentle yoga poses can relax your tight shoulders.)
Real live instruction is worth it.
The other thing I learned from that instructor? I probably shouldn't have started with videos. Obviously it would have been nearly impossible to find the time to go to a yoga class every day, but attending one showed me that trying to get the basics of yoga from a series of videos probably wasn't the best introduction. The instructor came over to me several times to make small adjustments to my form, and I learned that I'd been doing a few poses wrong the whole time. Doing yoga by video also requires you to constantly look up to see what the instructor is doing next, while an in-person instructor can walk around the room and give specific instructions like "lift your left leg to your shin" if she sees anyone who looks confused. (That said, here are 6 times you should actually ignore your yoga instructor.)
The benefits are endless.
When you're a girl my size, adding 10 minutes of exercise—even a gentle exercise like yoga—may seem like you're after one thing: weight loss. But the goal of this experiment had absolutely nothing to do with my weight. I have no idea how much I weighed at the beginning of the month and no idea how much I weigh at the end—and I don't care. What I wanted from this experience was to stand up a little straighter and to wake up without a throbbing pain in my upper back. My research, however, told me I was setting my sights too low. There are plenty of studies out there that claim yoga is beneficial for much more than a little back pain, like mood, breathing, flexibility, energy, and even sexual function. (Don't believe me, check out your body on yoga.)
Even though I was doing yoga for only 10 minutes a day, I still noticed some pretty awesome benefits. By the end of the month, I could stand in tree pose without feeling like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I could walk up to my third-floor apartment without wheezing for the next few minutes. I could tell when my posture started to slip and I needed to stand up straight (these 7 exercises instantly un-hunch your shoulders). Oh, and that back pain? It's not completely gone, but it certainly hurts less and there are some days my back doesn't hurt at all.
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Master a Cajun classic in 30 minutes
A little ritual helps me settle in each time I move into a new home. I christen the kitchen with a treasured recipe.
In December, my husband and I relocated from New Orleans to Washington for my new job as recipes editor at the Washington Post. As we unpacked in our rowhouse on a chilly, overcast day, I knew just what we needed to warm our bellies and push back against the strangeness of new surroundings: an étouffée.
In addition to filling the air with familiar scents, this unfussy comfort food is perfect for hectic moving days, because it has few ingredients and comes together in 30 minutes.
It is a classic from the canon of Cajun and Creole favorites. The term étouffée (AY-too-Fay) means to smother. In food parlance, that means the proteins, usually shrimp or crawfish tails for this dish, are “smothered,” or simmered, in a sauce of fats and sauteed vegetables.
I bet your recipe repertoire includes some variation on this theme: Saute vegetables until softened, add a quick-cooking protein and create a comforting sauce to serve over a starch or grain.
This recipe allows home cooks to practice two fundamental skills required for much Cajun and Creole cooking: making a roux and chopping and sauteing “the trinity,” or Cajun/Creole mirepoix, of onion, celery and bell pepper.
Like with many beloved recipes, interpretations of étouffée vary — even within families. Some people insist it feature tomatoes — crushed or paste; some say never. Some thicken the sauce with a roux; others say it should be thinner and lighter. Some insist the fat be butter; others allow for more healthful substitutes, such as olive oil.
I came by this recipe through marriage. It’s how my husband, a Cajun from Cut Off, a tiny town in Lafourche Parish, just before Louisiana meets the Gulf of Mexico, makes it. But even I tweak his version a bit, subbing in olive oil for most of the butter, retaining just a couple of tablespoons in the roux for flavor. This one is light on the spices, too. Some folks add bay leaf, thyme, a squeeze of fresh lemon or another pinch or two of fiery cayenne. We add garlic to ours, which some dismiss as a no-no. We also like to use red bell peppers rather than the traditional green.
That’s the beauty of cooking at home, right? You get to make a dish the way you like it. That might be your grandmother’s full-fat version or a lighter take that suits a more healthful diet.
Active: 20 minutes | Total: 30 minutes
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 medium cloves garlic, minced (about 1 tablespoon)
1 large white onion, finely diced
1 stalk celery, finely diced
¼ cup finely diced red bell pepper
3 scallions, white and green parts, finely diced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1½ pounds peeled, deveined medium (41-50 count) shrimp, thawed if frozen
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon Creole seasoning
Cooked white or brown rice, for serving
In a Dutch oven or deep-sided pot over medium-high heat, heat the oil until shimmering. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add the onion, celery, bell pepper, scallion and parsley. Cook, stirring, until softened and with onions just beginning to get translucent, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat.
In a small pot over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the flour and stir until smooth. Cook, stirring, until the roux darkens to a light brown color, about 5 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and continue stirring to allow roux to darken a bit more.
When the roux is the desired color, add it to the vegetables and stir until fully incorporated.
Return the Dutch oven to medium heat. Add the shrimp, cayenne and Creole seasoning and stir to combine. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until shrimp turn pink and are cooked through, about 10 minutes. (The cooking time will vary with the shrimp size.)
Taste and season with more cayenne and Creole seasoning, if desired. Serve right away over cooked white or brown rice.
If going low-carb, the étouffée is good over steamed riced cauliflower. Sprinkle with the chopped green onion or parsley, if desired.
Recipe notes: This dish requires no stock. The moisture from simmering the raw shrimp will create the liquid needed for the sauce. If the sauce is too thick, add water or stock, 1 tablespoon at a time, until desired consistency.
One caution: It’s easy to overcook shrimp as cooking time will vary with the size and freshness of the crustaceans, so simmer the shrimp until they are pink and curled. Then, pluck out one to do a taste test.
About that roux: If you’ve never made a roux, don’t be intimidated. It’s simple. Combine equal parts fat and flour over medium heat and stir until you reach the desired color. The darker the roux, the deeper the sauce’s color and flavor. This recipe is a great way to practice because it only uses 3 tablespoons of flour and 3 tablespoons of butter. If you go too far and scorch the roux, pitch it, and start again.
Storage: Store the cooled étouffée in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.
Nutrition: Calories: 540; Total Fat: 39 g; Saturated Fat: 11 g; Trans Fat: 0 g; Cholesterol: 280 mg; Sodium: 570 mg; Carbohydrates: 12 g; Dietary Fiber: 1 g; Sugars: 2 g; Protein: 36 g
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