Can a tomato help you focus? 🍅
Let's buckle down!
Tomato Time
Recently, I noticed I have an increasingly difficult time focusing. My time becomes pockmarked with alerts, ideas, phone calls, and snacks. When I settle in to get things done, well...it's been a journey.
Too boring, too important, too creative for now.
When it comes to boring or mundane tasks, it’s hard for me to focus because everything else seems so much more….fun.
And the more important tasks feel like they would be better addressed when I have more quality time (I should start this first thing in the morning! That’s a better time!).
Creative tasks seem too overwhelming to start. I need to be in the right “mood”. Or maybe I need to find some inspiration first (hello, Pinterest). This leaves very little time when the stars align and that I’m ready to do the work.
In a society designed to distract, entertain and interrupt, finding time to focus and do the work becomes increasingly difficult. We can look back on an afternoon and have a hard time seeing what exactly we accomplished. (Okay, I just spent 20 minutes googling articles about distraction to include here….there are many….take my word for it.)
Today, I wanted to share a process that is working for me in hopes you might find it easy and helpful.
The Pomodoro technique. It’s a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. Maybe you've heard of it, but it's worth another look. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. Each interval is known as a pomodoro, from the Italian word for 'tomato', after the kitchen timer that Cirillo used.
A goal of the technique is to reduce interruptions. You are making a small agreement with yourself to set aside distractions for 25 minutes and focus on one task. With this technique, you can chunk larger projects into many pomodoro work periods with small breaks between each. At the end of four pomodoros, you take a longer break.
I love this because it also respects our body's natural daily cycles of 90 - 120 minutes before we need a longer “human break” - for food, water, a little bit of body movement. You know, all the frills that come with being a mammal.
So, how does it work? It’s super easy.
Let's get busy!
How to Pomodoro:
🍅 Define your task - what will your work accomplish?
🍅 Set 25 min timer - there's a great one here: https://pomofocus.io/
🍅 Work until timer goes off - this is the hard part! Stick with it.
🍅 Take a 5 minute break - reflect on what you accomplished
🍅 Start again! Repeat up to 4x. After 4x, take a 30 min break
Here’s a nice In depth visualization of how pomodoros can be used to estimate and build on each other for larger projects.
A key is defining what you're going to do specifically before the timer starts. That's a different approach than just looking at an open 30 minutes and assuming you'll "get stuff done".
Give it a whirl! Let me know what you chose and how the pomodoro technique worked for you!
Dive Deeper
Indistractable is a quick read about how we can become focused, intentional and effective. Written by Nir Eyal, his website includes some nice tools and bonuses → [LINK]