15 The Pomodoro Technique
The Pomodoro Technique is a time-management system formulated in the late 80s. The ideas is simple: break your time into slots of 25 minutes + 5 minutes of a break. It helps especially well if you have to meet several deadlines in the same week, or progress on multiple fronts within the same day.
How it works in practice: every “pomodoro” is a set of time of 25 mins. You dedicate those 25 mins to one single task. When the time goes off, you can have another 25 mins on a different task, or continue with the same for one more pomodoro. The idea behind this is that our brain can benefit from switching tasks. Yes, sometimes we need those 3 hours of immersion. But life does not work around slots of 3 hours, you have to work it into your work-habit. This technique may help with building longer and longer chunks of time dedicated to one single task, if you ever need it.
Why it makes me feel better: because at the end of the day, I would close my laptop having progressed on all fronts. It helped me going to bed with the feeling that I did not have major, massive tasks awaiting me the day after. Instead, I had tasks that I had already tackled. When I have the luxury of having only one thing to do, then the Pomodoro technique was equally useful for the reasons we all know: you start with 25/30 minutes, which stretch into 40, then 45… and soon you found you have been writing, or studying, or doing an assignment for an hour non-stop.
Online tools
- Pomofocus, web-based timer that gives you the option to write in your goals, and mark them as completed.
- Writing Timer, similar tool but with a different interface.
- Tomato Timer, functions as those above but has different options.
- Second Interval Timer, if you want big flashy numbers!
- There is also Marinara, a Chrome extension.