yeah, i have no idea about how to time this. i've been thinking about that though...

okay so truth be told when we learned the exercise in group the trainers timed it for us. i couldn't figure out what to do with the timing then so i chose to focus on my breathing... and i'd follow 20 breaths (and never mind how many seconds that is). but... that was a fairly hard exercise to get into. i've tried to get people doing mindfulness exercises with me before and i suggested the breathing exercise but the person found they would panic and had to stop doing the exercise. my t said that people who have panic attacks often find the focusing on internal body sensations exercises to be the hardest one and so it isn't really an appropriate exercise to start with... i guess the skills trainers i had were new to it. i remember that quite a few of the other group members really struggled with that exercise.

i don't see why you couldn't start by focusing on an egg timer. one might be distracted by thoughts like 'about half way' and 'nearly up' but i guess that one is going to be distracted by something at any rate...

it is good to vary the objects that you become aware of, however, so it doesn't become stimulus dependent (you want to be able to do it at various other points during the day with whatever object you have at hand).

don't know about timing... do you have a cellphone with a timed alarm? not sure what the smallest times are that you can set them for...