Pomodoro Technique: Summary and Final Thoughts

moon-city(56)

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The Pomodoro Technique

Key Learnings

The main premise of this book is to set up a timer for 25 minutes for an activity with 5 minutes of break to meet the following goals: decrease anxiety, enhance focus, increase awareness, and boost motivation. You must continuously work until the timer sets off at 25 minutes.

The word Pomodoro itself is inspired by a tomato shaped timer. This book highlighted 2 key foundations of the technique: improving focus on tasks and gaining clarity of thoughts. There are 5 stages which sum up the whole premise of Pomodoro:

Planning out tasks which need to get done
Tracking your progress for each task
Recording your performance
Processing how things went during the pomodoro session
Visualizing your next pomodoro session

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There are also 3 key rules to keep in mind:

1. Break down activities which require more than 5 to 7 pomodoros. For example, if it takes 5 sessions of 25 minutes each to get done with a single task, break it down into simpler tasks
2. If it takes less than 1 pomodoro to do a task, add more tasks to the pile. For example, if you can clean you room in less than 25 minutes, add another activity which can fill up the 25 minute bracket of time.
3. If an urgent matter comes up during pomodoro session, void the pomodoro and start again afterwards.

My Thoughts

Personally, I like the fact that the author of this book recognizes that humans are not perfect, and we do experience internal and external interruptions which can distract us. One of the core takeaways from this book is that you don’t have to compete with time. For example, the goal is not to get as much done during the 25 minutes by forcing yourself to compete with time but instead focus on awareness of sticking with the task at hand with minimal distractions.

One of the challenges for a beginner starting out with this technique is that 25 minutes might seem like a lot of time to spend on a task without ANY distractions (ex: no scrolling on your phone) but you can build up your tolerance.

Let me know what you think about this technique and whether it would be something you would try or not?