Pomodoro Technique

I have been vaguely aware of the pomodoro technique for a while.  I didn't look into it because I thought it was something I already did.  I have for many years now used something rather similar to it that I devised myself so I didn't really pay it any attention.

But I was on the new Lifehacker UK site a couple of weeks ago and it offered up a 2 minute video on the subject.  I could risk that amount of time so I gave it a try.





It was quite a revelation.  What I had done was simply schedule sessions of arbitrary length - often 15 minutes - against a timer.  I didn't trouble too much about the nature of the timer itself.  Can the ticking of a clock really help you concentrate?  I haven't done any controlled experiments and the power of suggestion is a powerful one, but I have to say I think it does.  (Of course if the power of suggestion is what is responsible for the productivity boost then that doesn't undermine the boost you actually achieve.)

The other thing about it is that the time schedule of 25 minutes with an optional 5 minute break seems a very natural length of time for a session.  It is long enough to get absorbed into what you are doing, but short enough to not be daunting.  It also lends itself well to fitting into a normal working day.  You can for instance do one before breakfast to get yourself started.  You can allocate 16 to a day to give a normal 8 hour work day.   For me that is particularly satisfying - I have spent nearly 30 years of my life working 8 hours a day at a job.  To do that amount of work in a day feels like I have done enough.  And if I can get it finished by about 4pm, then that is a satisfying days work.

But the real beauty of the technique is its flexibility and the way it makes it easy to keep track of what you have achieved and how you might improve it.   I log all the sessions onto my calendar so I can see what time I started and finished working.   My ideal is to start early, and to finish early.  You can also monitor how much you get done during a session - easier with some tasks than others - so you can work on getting your productivity while you are actually working up.  Personally I'd use that to schedule less time working and more time doing other things - but I guess if you are really driven to be highly creative or very rich you might regard that as an end it itself.

But all in all, a nifty technique.  I think it pays to investigate these things from time to time to see if there are better ways of working out there.