I love productivity hacks. I love thinking of ways where I can do more in the day.
I’ve known about the Pomodoro method for a long time, but I always rolled my eyes at it. I thought
it was silly to impose a break in the middle of working. I like being productive, and the
idea that there’s a timer that’ll tell me when to stop working is the opposite of productivity.
I now know that to be productive and maintain stamina, you’d want to take
breaks. By taking breaks, you can end up working longer and more effectively.
But when does taking a break become an interruption? That’s what I wanted to know myself.
If you don’t know, the Pomodoro method is a productivity technique where you
work for 25 min intervals with five-minute breaks in between,
with a longer break of around 15 min, after four intervals.
In this video, I’ll share my thoughts on using the Pomodoro method for the
past month. What did I learn, what did I like, and what did I dislike?
Pro: The Pomodoro Method is a great way to
audit whether you actually have a focus problem. If you cannot work for 25 mins without stopping
for some reason, not even for one interval, then my friend, you have a focus problem.
If you want to test your focus, then using the Pomodoro method is a great way to do
it. If you can’t maintain attention for one 25 min block, you need to ask yourself why.
Con: The Pomodoro
method doesn’t stop you from being distracted. It’s just a timer and it’ll ring at the end
whether you were working or not. At many points, I would start doing something else in the middle
of my focused time and forget that I was still on the clock. I could receive a message or a phone
call that pulls me from my work, and suddenly the timer goes off. What do I do then? Make up
the time in the break or keep working? Or count everything I was doing as work when it wasn’t?
It’s hard to keep yourself accountable, and it’s hard to measure the success of an interval.
Pro: It’s nice to
know there is a break coming up and it gives me something to work towards. For example,
if I have a small task—like writing an email—I would want to finish it in the
25 min chuck, so it pushes me to work efficiently within that time limit.
Parkinson’s law states that a task would expand to the time you give it. And aiming
to get something done in 25 mins and hitting that mark makes the break feel so rewarding.
Con: However,
when you aren’t able to complete your task in the 25 min, and let’s say, you need ten
more minutes until you can complete it, you feel guilty for stopping and taking your break.
I get conflicted when that happens, because in a way, I want to finish the work,
and in another way, I want to honor the Pomodoro method and the “benefits” it offers.
Pro:
The Pomodoro Method shows that you’ve created momentum. On a good day, when I can add up
the intervals of focus time, I feel that I have accomplished a lot. I average around 7 intervals
of focused work, which at 25 min each, adds up to about 3 hours. Which is pretty productive.
While those days are anomalies, it does feel good when I can get a streak going.
Con: It’s pretty easy to forget to set the
timer. Yep, something I sit down after returning from my break and I’d forget to start the timer.
I might have worked for 10 minutes before I remember to switch it back on,
and when that happens, I bail on the whole Pomodoro thing for the day and just go rogue.
Pro: The Promodoro method gives me a
sense that I have worked. Reading and taking notes on an article never feels complete. As a writer,
it can take days to write and edit a piece, and in 25 min little progress is actually made.
But by focusing for 25 min, I know I have done some work and by chipping away 25
minutes at a time, my efforts will add up. This is especially useful when editing,
where I can end up fixated on a sentence or a word for way too long.
Con:
I’m not always sure what to do with my breaks, especially when it’s only five minutes. Five
minutes is only enough time to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. Sometimes, I just sit at
my computer or wander back and forth. Which can feel unproductive, and I get a little antsy.
Alternatively, the 15 min break can feel very long, but also not long
enough to eat a meal or grab some coffee outside the office. When you’re committed
to the Pomodoro Method, you’ll experience some unnecessary rigidity in the workday.
Overall, I like the Pomodoro method and it’s something I use to kick-start a work session.
Sometimes I think of work like a marathon where I just have to surge through and
get to the finish line without stopping. But it’s exhausting to do that every day. Instead,
with the Pomodoro method, I can think of work as run training, where you do intervals,
you run hard for a few minutes and then you walk a bit to get your heart rate back down. As you do
this over and over, you build stamina, so when it is time to hunker down, you’ll be fit to do so.
If you’re wondering whether you have trouble focusing, try the Pomodoro method for a few
weeks and you should start noticing these weird ticks that you have or what triggers
pull you away from your work. Once you acknowledge them, you can then decide
whether they are impacting your productivity and start eliminating them if they are.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes in the comment below.