We can start a countdown for an item in org mode with:

(org-timer-set-timer)

This will prompt for a value of minutes or h:mm:ss for the countdown. You will receive a notification when the timer is done.

We can pause or continue the timer with:

(org-timer-pause-or-continue)

We can stop the timer completely with:

(org-timer-stop)

We can create a timer item that looks like this:

0:00:00

Some text description

0:00:10

Pressing RET will go to the next line

0:00:21

I can keep logging things that happened

The function we call to do this is:

(org-timer-item)

To stop the timer:

(org-timer-stop)

Note: You can only really have 1 clock going at a time but you can use packages like chronos if you need multiple clocks.

Goodhart's Law says: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.