How I Use The Pomodoro Technique

The pomodoro technique is the best procrastination cracker I have come across, and its popularity suggests that I am not the only person who finds it so.   The basic idea is that you set aside a defined block of time, 25 minutes is typical, and you concentrate on what you are doing for that period.  At the end of it you stop and take a break. 


Like chess, the rules are simple but the permutations numerous.  The length of time you take and how long you have a break for can be varied.  There are different ways of timing it.   And you can take different approaches to particular situations.   If you are doing a writing session, do you stop the second your session ends for example.  And if you have got engaged with the task should you just carry on, or should you force yourself to take a break. 

I am not tremendously consistent in this kind of thing I have to say.  But I have reached a few conclusions about it.  For a start, tempting as it is, it is a mistake to try and run your whole day around pomodoros.  It makes much more sense to use them for a set period of time.  My ideal is to get up and start them straight away and work solidly for 3 hours or so on them.  A target of 6 sessions, I call them pomos, is a great start to the day.  This is a habit I would like to build and I am in the process of building it.

As to what to do with breaks when they seem to interrupt your flow - I have discovered the hard way that a break can be pretty damaging to some tasks.  Others, not so much.  I think the punctuation of the breaks is important so I don't think powering through them is a good idea.  My solution is to have breaks to do something different that nonetheless requires a high level of concentration.  My favourite is to do a Duolingo lesson.  These have the great virtue of having a distinct end point - so it feels very natural to get back to the pomodoro schedule.

For timing I like to use a Chrome extension called Mariana.  This isn't especially sophisticated but it does keep track of how many pomos you have done.  I like that you can see how far you are into the pomo, and can track your time accordingly.  This post is, naturally enough, being done as a pomo session so I can keep an eye on the time and make sure I am on course to finish it in the time I have alloted to it.

But the biggest thing with pomo sessions is to make sure that before you embark on a set of them you have a clear plan of what you want to achieve.  I take this very seriously.  I start out with a mind map of my goal for the session.  I sometimes create an index card for each of the pomos.  I decide on the order I am going to tackle them in and make sure I have all the resources I need.  I have even treated this preparation as a pomo in its own right.  This is satisfyingly consistent but doesn't actually make practical sense.  Preparation is a process that takes as long as it takes and doesn't lend itself to the discipline of the pomodoro technique.  But having said that, I don't want to spend more than half an hour on it.

So as is often the case, the key to using the Pomodoro technique is more about how you use it than the virtues of the technique itself.  I am constantly working on how to get the best out of it.