Ticka Get the app

1 Minute Timer

Set for 1 minute. Press start — it rings when the time is up.

01:00

sound

What one minute is actually good for

A minute is too short to work in and too long to guess at, which makes it a measuring instrument rather than a working interval. Most people are badly calibrated: the thing you describe as taking a second usually takes forty, and the thing you have been putting off all week takes less than one minute.

That gap is worth testing directly. Time the task you keep deferring — replying to the message, rinsing the pan, writing the address on the envelope. Watching a full minute pass while you finish it tends to end the deferring, because the excuse was never about the minute.

The other honest use is a pause. A minute of breathing before a difficult call is long enough to slow your pulse and short enough that you cannot talk yourself out of it.