The Magic Clock
“How much longer?” In the fall of 1983, Jan Rogers was hearing this question a dozen times a day in her Cincinnati home. Her four-year-old daughter, Loran, was unusually curious about time. Jan tried every conceivable answer:
“Until the little hand moves here.”
“Until the alarm dings.”
“Two Sesame Streets.”
No matter what Jan said, little Loran just didn’t get it. So Jan went searching for a better clock. She tried digital clocks and analog clocks. She tried egg timers and alarms. She scoured Cincinnati’s shopping malls for a clock that could make the abstract idea of time clear to a four-year-old. But none of them worked. “I’m not giving up,” Jan thought. “I’ll invent a clock if I have to.” And that’s what she did.
That evening, Jan sat down at the kitchen table with scissors and a pile of paper and cardboard and started experimenting. “That first prototype was really simple,” Jan recalls. “A red paper plate cut to slide into a white paper plate. It was all manual, so I had to actually move the plates as time elapsed.”
Loran got it. And Jan realized she was onto something. She called her invention the “Time Timer.” At first, Jan manufactured the timers in her basement, using double-sided tape to hold the pieces together. Slowly but steadily, Jan Rogers turned the Time Timer into an enterprise. Today, Jan is CEO of a multimillion-dollar business, and you can find Time Timers in classrooms around the world, from kindergartens in Amsterdam to Stanford University.
The Time Timer itself is an object of simple beauty. True to Jan’s original design, it has a red disk that moves as time elapses. It makes the abstract passage of time vivid and concrete. When Jake first saw a Time Timer, in his son’s classroom, he fell in love. “Please,” he said to the teacher. “Tell me where to get one of these.” After all, if the timer worked for preschoolers, it should be perfect for CEOs. And it was.
We use Time Timers in our sprints to mark small chunks of time, anywhere from three minutes to one hour. These tiny deadlines give everyone an added sense of focus and urgency. Now, there are plenty of ways to keep time that don’t require a special device, but the Time Timer is worth the extra cost. Because it’s a large mechanical object, it’s visible to everyone in the room in a way that no phone or iPad app could ever be. And unlike with a traditional clock, no math or memory is required to figure out how much time is remaining. When time is visible, it becomes easy to understand and discuss, and that’s as important for a team of professionals as it was for Jan’s daughter Loran.
If you’re the Facilitator, using the Time Timer comes with two extra benefits. First, it makes you look like you know what you’re doing. After all, you’ve got a crazy clock! Second, although most would never admit it, people like having a tight schedule. It builds confidence in the sprint process, and in you as a Facilitator.
Jake likes to introduce the Time Timer with a bit of narrative, because timing people while they talk can be socially awkward. He says something like:
“I’m going to use this timer to keep things moving. When it goes off, it’s a reminder to us to see if we can move on to the next topic. If you’re talking when the timer beeps, just keep talking, and I’ll add a little more time. It’s a guideline, not a fire alarm.”
The first time you set it, people’s eyes may get big, and blood pressure may rise a little. But give it a chance. By the afternoon, they’ll be used to it, and most likely, they’ll want to take it with them after the sprint.