Provisional Order on Timer Preparation
A focus timer has been set for thirty minutes. Before starting the timer, several preparation activities are underway. The preparations have been running for eleven minutes.
In the version of events where the start button was pressed at 10:00am:
The timer ran. The session ended at 10:30am. The work was done.
This Version
At 10:00am, the timer was ready. The session was not.
The conditions for the session required:
Music: selected at 10:04am. The selection involved considering three playlists, choosing one, then returning to the second, then settling on the first. Four minutes.
Water: retrieved at 10:07am. The kitchen walk was three minutes, including a brief check of the phone on the return.
Desk: briefly tidied at 10:09am. Three items were moved. Two were identified as things to do later. One was placed in the priority zone.
Focus app settings: reviewed at 10:11am to confirm the timer length and notification suppression. This was the same setting that was used last time. No changes were made. One minute.
The Accounting
Eleven minutes of preparation preceded a thirty-minute session. The preparation is intended to produce conditions where the thirty minutes is used well. The preparation consumed thirty-seven percent of the session before the session started.
The session started at 10:11am. It ran until 10:41am. The work was done in thirty minutes.
The Provisional Order
The counterfactual version would have started at 10:00am and ended at 10:30am. The actual version ended at 10:41am. The difference is eleven minutes.
The music, water, desk tidying, and settings review may have improved the quality of the thirty minutes. They cost eleven minutes.
Whether the trade was worth it is not determinable from this analysis.