If you’re anything like me (God love you) then you find it difficult to focus on most tasks – it could be something like filing or basic admin work – or even just studying for those exams. You start off strong and then wham-o, all that motivation is gone! But how can you stop this? With the Pomodoro technique – the ultimate productivity tool!
I freaking love this technique and it’s so damned easy to do.
You need:
- Pen & Paper – you can use just digital tools, but I love the physicality of a good checklist
- Any device that has a timer – it can be a digital one on your smartphone/tablet or a physical one
Once you have these then you’re good to go – let’s improve that productivity!
- Sit down and have a think about the task that you want to complete. Write out what you want to accomplish – you don’t have to do this, but I just love putting pen to paper
- Decide how long you want each segment to be – traditionally it’s 25-minutes but a variation can be 90-minutes, which some feel is a more natural concentration cycle
- Once you’ve established how long you want to work, set your timer and commence that task
- End working on the task when that timer goes off and put a checkmark on a piece of paper
- If you’ve got less than four checkmarks, take a 5-minute break and then return to step 3)
- Once you’ve hit four checkmarks, take a longer break – up to 30-minutes, and then reset your checkmark and return to step 1) once more
And that’s it! It really is that easy. I’ve found it to be the best way for me to keep my focus & my productivity in check. Now, if you’re working a regular 9 – 5 with a potential 1-hour break, then this may not apply as such. What I would advise everyone to do is figure out what works for you and move around that.
You could, for example, take a 10-minute break for your long break and use that time to get a cup of coffee.