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How to Defy Physics and Be On Time

Guy Kawasaki Co-Founder, Alltop Recent Posts

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August 12, 2009

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Business Forecasting 2012

Our special feature on forecasting sheds light on how to choose the right model, offers advice from Jack Stack and more.

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During a recent trip to Edinburgh, I learned that this clock at the top of the train station is ten minutes fast. The theory is that people will then get to the train station earlier when the clock is fast; however, this probably isn’t as effective as it could be because even tourists like me know that it is ten minutes fast, so we can all compensate for this trickery.

A better solution is if the clock were fast, but you didn’t know exactly how fast. Such a clock exists for computers. You can get what’s called the Chindogu Procrastinator’s Clock here. It’s up to fifteen minutes fast as opposed to always fifteen minutes fast. I know someone who leaves for meetings after they are scheduled to start—somehow he thinks he can beat physics. This is perfect for him.

However, an issue with the Chingdogu Procrastinator’s Clock is that it’s in a window on your desktop. That window may not be visible, and many people look in their menu bar for the time. Thus, it would be better if clock in your menu bar was up to fifteen minutes fast. I tweeted this, and lo and behold, Brad Hutchings wrote a piece of software to do this and sent it to me.

We call it “Alltock—the Alltop Procrastinator’s Clock.” You can get it here. It displays a clock in your menu bar that’s up to fifteen minutes fast—you never know for sure. It doesn’t actually change the system clock of your computer—it just fakes you out.

For optimal use, you need to do two things: first, hide the very accurate Date & Time clock in your menu bar. To do this, go to the Apple menu and launch System Preferences, select Date & Time, and turn off “Show date and time in menu bar.” Second, in Alltock itself, check the box that says “Start at Login.” This makes it so that Alltock launches automatically every time you start your Macintosh.

I find it useful for my own procrastination. I’m thinking of installing it on a few people’s computers without telling them too. Whatever it takes to get the job done.