Procrastination, never finished projects, lack of motivation, overwhelmed by to-dos, not enough time, these are just some of the issues that many of us face today. And we do not really know how to cope with them in an adequate meaner. So most of the times we just give up on stuff that we want to do, mostly because we do not know how to handle our time.
86400 is the number of seconds in a day. We all get the same amount, yet how we spend it is up to us.
Most of us do not know how to handle our time to make the best of it, and then we wonder how do some people seem to do so much better.
It is not really a secret, they know what they want, they set goals, and they work on achieving these goals.
Enter The Pomodoro Technique, which is about how to work on achieving these goals and make consistent progress.
Time management
The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method.
The idea is to select a task, then break the work into 4 intervals of 25 minutes of lengths.
After the end of each interval, you take a 5-minute break.
After the end of all the 4 intervals, you take a 30-minute break.
And then you repeat, either on the same task, either on a different task.
In order for this to work, you have to make an honest commitment to yourself. During the work interval, nothing is more important than the task at hand. I repeat nothing! Well, if your house is on fire that might seem a tad more important. Just kidding, remember, nothing!
The Pomodoro Technique is awesome, but if you do not commit yourself exclusively to the task for a certain amount of time, it can not benefit you. And come on, a work interval is only 25 minutes. We do not really have an excuse for not being able to work continuously for 25 minutes.
Flow
While reading about the Pomodoro Technique online, I came across a nice, I call it hack, to get into a flow and maintaining that flow as much as possible.
Flow is that amazing state in which you transcend space and time, where past and future do not exist, and there is only the now. I am kidding, or am I? Joking aside flow is a state of mine of complete immersion in an activity, and you want to achieve it as often as possible because our productivity peaks in a flow state.
So how to do it? Well just do the Pomodoro Technique and when one interval ends, see how you fell and ask yourself, “do I want to take a break or I want to continue doing this super awesome task?“. If you feel that you want to continue, then continue with the next interval, do not take a break.
However, I do encourage you to take frequent breaks, at least one 10 minute break after 50 minutes of work.
Frequent breaks are better for working more efficiently and also to learn better.
Lessons learned
For some reason, when using the Pomodoro Technique, the mind seems to know that we only have a certain amount of time to do something, and it is not really that much, an interval being only 25 minutes.
It knows, in the way that makes you aware of your own commitment to doing as much as possible in a small amount of time.
It is like some weird time pressure without the actual pressure, probably because of how the mind process the meaning of each interval, and the purpose of the Pomodoro Technique.
The purpose being to get you a bit closer to the end of your goal, in a consistent pressure free, and why not, fun way.