A few months ago I shared some of the paper Emergent Task Timer forms I used before I wrote BubbleTimer. These were printed from David Seah's PDF and had been tailored a bit with scissors and a copy machine to better fit my needs.

In that post I promised to share what BubbleTimer looked like in the early days. Here is installment #1 of that promise. The earliest recorded history of BubbleTimer (source control checkin) is from April 20th, 2008. At this point I was already using BubbleTimer on a daily basis, as limited as it was:

Here are some of the things that occur to me when I look at the old version:

• Like David's paper forms, you couldn't mark a full 24 hours.
• At this point the system supported just 1 user and there was no login.
• I couldn't yet page between days (I had to edit the web address manually).
• I couldn't yet add, change, or delete activities and goals (I had to edit the database manually).
• A lot of functionality was missing: printing, exporting, sharing, charts, the chime, range clicking, multi-tasking, planning bubbles.
• No penciled in bubbles (not even the idea for them yet actually).
• "Exercise" was spelled right (BubbleTimer launched with a default activity called "Excercise").
• Not enough Carolina Blue!

Yet despite all of it's limitations, BubbleTimer helped me build BubbleTimer. I set a goal to spend time on it every day, and little by little, BubbleTimer was built.

I hope seeing some of BubbleTimer's history is interesting, but more than that, I hope it inspires you to keep making time for your goals. No matter how modest or gand they may be, they'll never get achieved unless you invest some of your time into them.

15 minutes? An hour? How much time doesn't matter. What does matter is that you carve a little time from all the other activities in your life that don't matter as much as your goals and dreams. When you look back in a few months on what you were able to accomplish with just a little time each day, you'll be amazed. I guarantee it.

I don't make enough time during the day to do nothing but just think. Let me be completely honest. I really mean I make almost no time.

I work in a detached home office so I have no commute or maybe I'd try to steal that time. I work hard and I fill up my day completely. I'm either with my family or I'm doing something "productive" at all times. There really is no other time.

The moments when I am alone with just my brain are usually when I'm doing some task on auto-pilot. But even those times I tend to steal for other purposes. Doing laundry? That sounds like a good time to catchup on podcasts. Exercising? I think I can read at the same time. Time alone with the mind is very rare. It's pretty much limited to the 5 minutes a day in the shower.

What a 5 minutes though! Not a shower goes by where I don't get some great new idea to try, or crack some hard problem that's been bugging me, or break down an amorphous task into an accomplishable plan, or remember something really important that's slipped through the cracks. I REALLY enjoy my think time. The return on time invested is the highest of any part of my day.

I've decided that 5 minutes is just not enough of a good thing. Why? I don't have paper in the shower so sometimes I forget my think time thoughts. On average one day a week goes by without me taking a shower. Shhh... don't tell! And finally, when I leave the shower I usually feel like there is something left in the mental tank, if I only had a little more time.

There are obvious diminishing returns here. 5 hours a day quietly thinking and your friends and loved ones might have good reason to start calling you lazy. Instead, my new goal is a modest 15 minutes. 15 minutes a day alone and quiet with no computer and no iTunes. Just me, some paper, and my thoughts.

Try it with me? All of our thoughts deserve their 15 minutes.

Photo by lightmatter.