Welcome to Learn Law Better, where today you are going to learn to use the
Pomodoro technique.
This time management technique leads to better focus, more mental creativity, less mental exhaustion,
a boost in motivation, and improvement in your study process.
Hi, this is Beau Baez, and today I want to talk to you about the Pomodoro technique, which
was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980’s.
Let me quote from his book, “The Pomodoro.”
“Every day I went to school, attended classes, studied and went back home… feeling that
I didn’t really know what I’d been doing, that I’d been wasting my time….
It was clear to me that the high number of distractions and interruptions and the low
level of concentration and motivation were at the root of the confusion I was feeling.
So I made a bet with myself, as helpful as it was humiliating: Can you study – really
study for 10 minutes?”
Does that sound familiar?
Do you have problems keeping focus?
Even if you are reading, do you ever find that you’ve been reading but you stopped
thinking about the reading several pages earlier?
So here is what Francesco did.
He went to his kitchen and grabbed his tomato shaped timer—by the way, the Italian word
for tomato is pomodoro.
He then forced himself to study in concentrated bursts, with small breaks in-between each
study segement.
Here is his recommended approach.
First, decide what task you are going to work on.
Second, set a timer for 25 minutes.
Third, start the timer and continue working on your task until the timer goes off.
Fourth, stop when the timer rings, place an X on a piece of paper, and take 5-minute break.
Fifth, after the break, go back to the second step and do another pomodoro.
A pomodoro is each uninterrupted 25-minute session, so if something breaks the 25 minute
session you don’t mark that down as a completed pomodoro—your good intentions don’t matter.
Finally, when you have four X’s on your piece of paper, take a longer break: 15 to
30 minutes.
Now some of you are already studying for longer periods of time, but you may find that this
method helps you with mental exhaustion and with knowledge retention.
Our brains need breaks to process what we have just learned, so you may learn more by
taking mini-breaks rather than working for long periods of time and then taking longer breaks.
In other words, this technique may allow you to study more efficiently.
With regards to the timer, Francesco recommends a manual kitchen timer, a piece of paper,
and a pen or pencil.
Now he believes that taking the timer and winding it creates a psychological decision on your
part to complete the task.
From a behavioral perspective, you now associate the setting of the timer and working till the timer
goes off, which strengthens your commitment to completing the task.
The key is to not give up right away.
You should notice a difference within a few days, and mastery of the pomodoro technique
anywhere from a week to three weeks.
As I was preparing this episode I decided to search for pomodoro apps.
Sure enough there are several, so I downloaded a free one called Focus Keeper Free.
I'm not endorsing it, that's just one I found. It makes a ticking sound, just like a manual kitchen timer.
It has a digital countdown and an analog rotating scale that looks like a kitchen timer.
At first I thought the little ticking sound--tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock--was disturbing, but the sound
actually ended up being rather soothing over time.
Ironically, I usually have very long periods of time without interruptions, but during my
first 25 segment I get a phone call, then my wife came in to talk to me.
This means I can’t count that first segment as a pomodoro.
The app also has a five minute timer that comes on for break time.
As with any time management technique, this may or may not work for you.
Some people swear by it and others despise the technique.
All I can suggest is that you give it a whirl and see if it works for you.
If you’ve got a kitchen timer start with that, but if not, try the little free app
and see if that works for you.
I’m going to try it as well, and I will report in the comments below how it worked for me.
I’ll also post a link in the description to a free copy of the Pomodoro Technique book,
so that you can delve deeper, if you want to explore further.
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