If you already use (10+2)*5 , the Task Destruct-o-matic offers an easy way to visualize your productive working time. If you do not use it, you might want to give it a try.
Dave Seah published a form called The Task Destruct-o-matic that visualizes the time you spent on an certain task – not as a low-level time tracking form but to visually give you feedback: you are productive, you actually did something – even if you haven’t finished the task yet.
For each task there is a sequence of bubbles, each representing an arbitrary time unit. You basically fill in a bubble whenever you make significant progress during that arbitrary time unit.
This is where the (10+2)*5 system comes into play. (10+2)*5 is the idea that in order to avoid too much procrastination you force yourself to work on a task for 10 minutes and are allowed to procrastinate for 2 minutes. When you did this 5 times in a row, an hour of productive work has passed. There is a Konfabulator widget that countdowns 10 minutes and then 2 minutes – it’s easy to implement that system. (Update: Konfabulator / Yahoo widgets was terminated on April 2012.)
Now if you use 10 minutes as the “arbitrary time unit” in Task Destruct-o-matic, then you can work with the (10+2)*5 system and easily visualize your productive working time.