2 Minute Timer

Two minutes, counted down and announced with an alarm. The length dentists ask for, and about as long as anyone will listen to an unprepared answer.

Two minutes

Two minutes is the recommended brushing time in essentially every national dental guideline, and the reason it is recommended is that people who do not time it average well under a minute while believing they have done two. It is the clearest everyday example of how badly self-estimated durations fail — the gap is not ten per cent, it is more than half.

It is also the standard unit of a short spoken answer. Interview responses, meeting updates and elevator pitches are all judged against roughly this length, and rehearsing against a timer rather than a feeling is what turns a rambling four minutes into a clean two.

The third use is the two-minute rule from task management: if something will take less than two minutes, do it now rather than writing it down, because capturing and re-reading it costs more than doing it. Running an actual timer on a few of those tasks is a quick way to find out how much of your list qualifies — usually far more than you would guess.

What people use it for

• Brushing teeth for the full recommended time
• Rehearsing a short answer or an update
• Steeping green tea, which turns bitter if left
• A two-minute plank, hold or stretch
• Timing a small task to see if it really is small

How it works

Set to two minutes already, so pressing Start or Space is the whole interaction.

The countdown reads the clock rather than counting ticks, so it finishes exactly two minutes after you started it even if you switch tabs or put the phone down.

Both fields are editable if you want two and a half minutes, or twenty seconds.

Space

Start or pause.

R

Reset.

Tab title

Shows the time left, so a background tab still tells you.

Questions

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