World's best countdown timer - now improved

There are a number of relatively innocuous, small things that make my life much better in proportion to their actual cost or apparent usefulness.

One of these is the Pyrex digital countdown timer.

I first bought one for my kitchen many years ago.

One day, when I was in the midst of one of my recurrent fierce battles with procrastination, I thought to myself hey, why not start the task, do it for one minute, and then you can stop and do something else.

Just one minute.

I got my timer, set it to count down for one minute, and then focused on my report or paper or whatever it was until the alarm sounded.

When it did, I said to myself, do another minute.

Then, when that alarm went off, I thought, I can do five minutes more.

And so in 15-minute chunks, with brief 5-and-10-minute pre-alarm chirps from the device to let me know release was imminent, I finished whatever it was I'd avoided doing.

And so it's gone for any number of years, this little tool helping me push through my own otherwise implacable resistance.

Now Pyrex has made their timer better.

The price ($9.99) is unchanged but they've

•Made it so it runs on a AAA battery (included) instead of one of those disk types you can never find and never have lying around at home

•Made the hour and minute digits different sizes, so you can distinguish them more easily than the old version where they were the same size

•Moved the buttons so that the stop/start functions are easily distinguishable from the hour /minute/reset buttons. The old version had all three buttons the same size, placed vertically, with their functions printed in tiny letters that were really hard to see

Features:

•As noted above, the 5-and-10-minute pre-alarms

•When time runs out, sounds a loud triple beep for one minute, then shuts itself off

•Counts down 19 hours and 59 minutes by minutes; counts up to 19 minutes and 59 seconds by seconds

•Magnet on the back on the collapsible stand, which locks in place when open

•Concealed spring clip to hold recipes, etc. I clip the thing to my clothing when there's something I'm supposed to do in X amount of time. It's so light you don't even notice it

•Small size: 2.75" x 2.25"

A great tool.