6 Minute Timer
A 6 minute timer counts down 360 seconds and sounds an alarm when it reaches zero. That is 0.1 decimal hours on a timesheet, or 10% of an hour.
A six minute timer divides an hour into ten, which is why it is the billing increment used across most of the legal profession.
Paused at 6:00
What a 6 minute timer is used for
Legal billing increments, short drills and tenth-of-an-hour tracking.
- Legal billing units
- Law firms bill in tenths of an hour, and one tenth is six minutes, so time is rounded to the nearest six minute unit on most invoices.
- Reading aloud
- Six minutes covers roughly nine hundred words at an average speaking pace of one hundred and fifty words per minute.
- Warm-up sets
- Six minutes is a standard warm-up before timed work in rowing and cycling.
Tracking time in tenths of an hour
If you bill in six minute units, the timer is a way to check your instinct. Start it when you pick up a client matter and note how many units have passed when you stop. A phone call that felt like nothing often comes to two or three units once the follow-up email and the file note are included.
Many firms round each entry up to the next full unit, so a four minute call is billed as 0.1 hours and a seven minute call as 0.2. Check your engagement letter or firm policy for the exact rule, and use the billable hours calculator to total a day of entries.
The 6 minute timer at a glance
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Length | 6 minutes |
| Seconds | 360 |
| Decimal hours | 0.1 |
| Clock format | 0:06 |
| Share of an hour | 10% |
| Fraction of an hour | 1/10 |
| Blocks per hour | 10 |
| Blocks per 8 hour day | 80 |
| Pomodoros (25 min each) | 0.24 |
| Decimal hours are rounded to two places, as payroll does. Block counts are whole blocks with no breaks between them. | |
For other lengths, use the minutes to decimal hours converter or the hours calculator.
Your focus time, counted and kept
A countdown tells you when the block ends. PomoTodo records that the block happened, which task it went to and what the week added up to, so a month of 6 minute blocks becomes something you can actually look at.
Free plan tracks unlimited focus time across unlimited tasks. No card required.
Timers either side of 6 minutes
If 6 minutes is the wrong length, the two nearest are 5 minutes and 7 minutes.
Questions about the 6 minute timer
Why do lawyers bill in six minute units?
Because six minutes is one tenth of an hour, so a unit converts to a decimal without any arithmetic. Three units is 0.3 hours. It survives because it makes a timesheet addable in your head, not because six minutes is a natural unit of work.
How do I convert minutes into tenths of an hour?
Under the usual round-up convention, divide the minutes by six and round up to the next whole unit. One to six minutes is 0.1, seven to twelve is 0.2, thirteen to eighteen is 0.3, and so on up to sixty minutes, which is 1.0.