Pomodoro

A pomodoro is a tomato in Italian. It's also a system for time management and maintaining focus in order to get work done, invented by Francesco Cirillo. The name refers to a tomato-shaped timer he used to keep himself on track.

The basic idea is that you can do just anything for a short period of time, even if it is difficult or unpleasant or if there is something that causes you to lose focus. You also want to make sure you don't get too deep into something that will suck you in all day and keep you from getting to other tasks that need to be done. In the agile project management world, we use a concept called timeboxing, which is where you set a certain amount of time for a meeting or a task, and you have to fill the box but not overflow the box. When the time is up, the meeting is over, and you all move onto the next meeting or task, rather than letting it bleed into the next hour and make everything else start late, cascading through your day's calendar to where you end up staying late or pushing it to tomorrow to get things done.

To put it another way, considering the traditional triple constraints in project management, of scope, time, and cost, we more or less ignore the cost factor a bit and really look at things as a tradeoff between scope and time. Either you work until a task is completed, no matter how much time it takes, or else you work for a certain amount of time no matter how much work was completed.

In the system, a pomodoro is a 25 minute block of time in which to complete work. You want to break up the work into chunks that you think can be reasonably done in that time. The longer you use the system, especially if you track what you get done, the better you get at estimating what you can do in that amount of time. If you get to the end of the 25 minute timer, and you're not done, that's okay. You stop anyway. Take a 5 minute break to go to the bathroom, listen to a song, do some jumping jacks, eat a sandwich, or whatever will allow you a little bit of release without getting sucked into something else time consuming. If you get done early, you keep working anyway until the full 25 minutes are up. It could be reporting on the work you completed, getting a head start on the next task, planning out your next day, or anything else that keeps you productive.

You repeat 4 pomodoros, at 25 minutes each, with 5 minute breaks in between them. After the fourth pomodoro, you take a half hour break. After that half hour, you do another block of 4 pomodoros. A pomodoro could be working on a report or spreadsheet, a meeting with a client or coworker, checking and responding to emails, doing professional development, or if a student doing something like reading a chapter, working through homework problems, watching some class lecture videos, taking a quiz, practicing an instrument, etc.

The key is to not break up the 25 minute pomodoro into anything smaller. If you get a call or text or someone popping into your office or anything else that seems urgent, push it back to your break if possible. If not possible, then the interrupted pomodoro doesn't count, and you reset the timer to 25 minutes when you are ready to start up again. Turn off notifications on your phone and close your email client to ensure you're only checking messages when the planned pomodoro calls for it or during a break.

By keeping focus in short bursts, they will add up to you getting more work done than if you let a constant stream of distractions get you off your groove, while still knowing you won't get burnt out since you do have a break coming up in just a few minutes.