Help or hinder

I have been using the alarm on my cell phone when I start writing lately.  I keep setting it to 30 minutes to make myself write at least that long.  I have had trouble in the past with whiling away that amount of time staring at a blank page wondering what I was supposed to put down.  I don't think I've found all those answers about that yet but I am finding that the alarm seems to be working in a positive way.  I am snoozing those 30 minutes more often than not once I have reached it to allow myself more time.
It happened again this morning.  I had set a 30 minute span of time on the alarm and again it became 50 minutes.  Yesterday it turned into 90 minutes.  I finally shut the alarm off and just kept going.  It crossed my mind that the alarm might be hindering me but it isn't.  I almost thought 15 minutes into it this morning I was not going to make the full 30.  I was reaching the end of another chapter and didn't think I had covered enough.  I noticed this chapter and the one I have previously written are words shorter than my opening chapters.
Had I done that on purpose?  Did I mean to start writing shorter chapters or was I running out of steam and story and letting my concise, editing powers overtake me?  I realized when I reached that pivotal 15 minutes that I was writing a note about a character in my binder for future use.  Ahh, another stategy, another way to connect the dots, to weave a thread to be tied later when needed.  After making my notation I went back to my document and added a few words.  Then the alarm went off.  My 30 minutes had past and I hit snooze and kept writing, and hit snooze again and didn't think about it until I glanced over at the cell phone and it was 20 minutes over my initial 30 minute time frame.
I finished the chapter and even though it is still shorter I had added an additional 350 or so words to the original.  Not a lot of extra words but the thread I picked up felt so much better than the way it was originally without it.  The alarm seems to be helping not hindering.  I can fit in an extra 30 minutes here and there as I go.  It seems to be helping me accomplish what I should be doing.
Everyone has kept telling me to just keep writing...
Hey everyone, I am.
TT