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When I need to get stuff done. Stuff like: assignments, and projects. I like to employ a strategy that I use called the Pomodoro (Italian for Tomato) Technique, which is a famous technique where you spend 25 minutes working, followed by a 5 minute rest, which goes on for however many cycles you would like it to go on for.

I’m sure you have heard of it, especially if you have been a chronic procrastinator and you are painfully self-aware of the work that needs to get done but can’t seem to muster up the focus to do so. But I would like to propose a way to look at it.

I actually didn’t have the Pomodoro technique in mind when I first made this technique, as the birth of this idea came from how especially efficient I am with my work when its during the exam. Haven’t you thought about how in the world you can finish so many questions (some requiring very long answers too) in the span of 1-2 hours? But when I get back home, I can barely write a paragraph without getting insanely distracted. Therefore, I wanted a technique that would put me in that “examination work mode” that I could finish my work quickly but also high quality too.

I started with imposing a strict time limit on my work, that worked to an extent, pressuring me to finish my work in a set amount of time, giving me the confidence that I would be done with this work in this amount of time, but after awhile, it just wasn’t feasible for work that was hard to tell how long it would take. Therefore, to accommodate this, I made a few changes

I doubted this technique at first, and thought it was another gimmick that would just work for a week, but seeing the impact it had on my work lately has actually showed that this is actually a technique that works for me, quite well too…

It’s been super useful recently, mainly because it is the Deepavali break and I don’t seem to have many things to do except assignments. The work is not really encouraging by itself, and neither are the thoughts of procrastination and anxiety which builds up as a result. Here is how I employ the technique:

• 30 minutes of pure focused work (or deep work? as they call it)
  • No distractions allowed, this includes:
    • no music
    • no youtube
    • no notifications (silence your phone)
  • Go into it with a mindset where you HAVE to completed the sections and goal you have set for yourself within the 30 minutes, kind of like an exam or an e-assessment test with a time limit (IB-MYP peeps get it)
• 10 minutes of REST, and other things…
  • No YouTube
  • Sit in silence
  • Refill your bottle
  • Reply to text messages
• Spend 3-5 minutes writing down what you need to get down EXACTLY in the next 30 minutes
• Repeat the cycle

Notes: I also like to incorporate this technique with completing the hardest work during the earliest part of the day (Eat the Frog) as that is the time where willpower is abundant and if completed, the whole rest of the day is off! i can focus on the things I want to do

Without this technique, I barely can focus on the work at hand for minutes at a time, I would write a paragraph and scroll through YouTube for the next 30 minutes until return back to the dreaded Google Docs to write another paragraph (cycle repeats)

I bet this technique wouldn’t work for everybody, but I would still encourage this for people who find it hard to get any work done without being distracted constantly and switching contexts every 10 seconds when working.

See Also

The Magical Pocket Book

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