In fact, an alert to take a break might prove too much of a distraction once you’ve finished your sprint if you’re in the zone. On the other hand, if your main focus is on one task such as writing columns and blog posts, you might not see the benefit of splitting your time down so narrowly. It can really help you to stay motivated and less prone to distraction, provided you’ve got the discipline (and something satisfying to occupy the time). If you’re someone who tends to juggle a lot of different types of job throughout the day - regular meetings followed by intense periods of proofreading for example - you’ll benefit from a fixed schedule with which to complete tasks. Timing your activity gives you more ownership of the tasks you’re working on and keeps you more engaged throughout. It’s the process of being mindful about how you’re spending your time that can make a seemingly massive task appear much less daunting. The main advantage of the Pomodoro Technique is making you more engaged with your workload. You may find it helps (or hinders) your working style if you tend to get stuff done a certain way. Pomodoro works in some lines of work better than others. Whether it’s complete silence or your favourite video game soundtrack, anything that can help to boost your focus can help considerably as you get to grips with Pomodoro. To increase your ability to concentrate, you may benefit from a quiet place to work - or maybe some music. You could even pick up an egg timer or - as Cirillo himself famously used - a tomato-style timer, for an off-screen, more physical representation of your time. There are plenty of specific Pomodoro timers available in your mobile app store. You could use a countdown timer on your browser or a mobile app, just to time out the work periods. When a task is going to be much more time-consuming, the key is figuring out how you can break it down into more manageable pieces.Īpart from this, you only need a Pomodoro timer to get started. If you can round up a few of these tasks together you should put them into the same Pomodoro period. Some will be much smaller jobs, like writing a couple of emails. Not every task in your to-do list is going to take exactly 25 minutes to complete. It doesn’t even necessarily need to be a 25/5 split - the idea is for you to be mindful of how you’re spending your time. So you can continue to work safe in the knowledge that you’re spending your time meaningfully.Īll you really need to get started with the Pomodoro Method is the little mental push to stay focused on your work for the duration of the little ‘tomato’. This means it’s no longer a question of ‘where did the time go?’ but a visual reminder of what you achieved today. As you add another tomato to your timesheet, you’re adding another indicator of the progress you’ve made during the day.
#MY LITTLE POMODORO PLUS#
With Pomodoro, you can work comfortably and mindfully on the task in hand and resist the urge to click away.ĭid you know? A study of more than 10,000 participants showed that our attention span peaks in our early forties.Ī single Pomodoro is 30 minutes - that’s the 25-minute sprint plus the five-minute break. But a major factor in losing time and productivity isn’t just the distractions, it’s the time you need to re-focus on the job.
Those daunting tasks and timelines can be the first thing to make you saunter off into another browser tab and check social media or switch to an easier job. Then you’ll realise you’re ticking off the tasks at a rate of knots just by thinking smaller. Take a steady, methodical approach to your goals and mark them off as you go. So instead of imagining that whole list as your goal, imagine it’s just a couple of them in the next 30 minutes. If you do more with your hands than type - sculpt, paint or play sport - you can still use Pomodoro to get into the zone. But the beauty of the technique is its compatibility with many other types of work. It also works for other more mundane admin tasks that you’ve been putting off.
#MY LITTLE POMODORO FULL#
Of course, just one Pomodoro period may not get you the full blog post or whitepaper you’re looking to produce, but the Pomodoro Technique is also useful for prodding you to take regular breaks.īy maintaining your focus and discouraging drift, you can finally conquer that mountain of unread emails that just seems to be growing. If you have a list of fixes to implement as long as your arm, you can set the timer and plough through a clutch of them before taking a well-earned break.īreak up tasks into things like research, drafts and proofreads using the Pomodoro Method. Just about anyone with a to-do list can benefit from the focused approach that Pomodoro offers - particularly if their to-do lists tend to be on the repetitive side.Ī few examples of tasks that might benefit from the Pomodoro Technique include:
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