I very much like the idea and practice of using time as a tool.

I heard about it at a software developers conference a while back. When micro services and agile development  were growing in popularity.

The concept was to take a problem and throw resources at it. The most appropriate ones for the task in hand. Tools, techniques, expertise, skills, people, time.

Using time, programmers work in sprints. One definition is: "Sprints are time-boxed periods of one week to one month, during which a product owner, scrum master, and scrum team work to complete a specific product addition."

I use tiny sprints to write fiction. Or for client work. Sometimes I throw 10 minutes at a job. Sometimes it's 20. More often it's an hour at a time.

And between 'sprints' I'm cooling my brain down. Reading. Watching the news. Walking. Gardening. Tidying. Dozing. ​Spending my time units doing something relaxing.

Like this.  

​At night I dwell in spacious places
Roaming sleepless through capacious valleys,
Cavernous office complexes, hollow caves, building sites, wind howling through my head,
Floating wide eyed and awake.
My thoughts become spacious places
Yawning chasms, sprawling ruins
Reaching skywards, stretching planetwards, to the galaxies and dark matter beyond.
Then at some point and with no warning
I crash through the abyss
Into the smallest of places
And nestle there
Hunkered down,
asleep.