We often face difficulty in focusing on one thing for a long time. We hear people complain about it to others. Be it a daily routine, work at the office, or creative tasks, the work and the to-do list is ever increasing. We make our best efforts to keep ourselves as organized as possible; thinking that it will help us focus better. But in today’s date and time, digital distraction is another reason we feel over-run all the time. We more often than not see ourselves jumping from one task to another, without sticking to any of it for long enough to get the work done. In the recent past, a lot of tools that are proven to increase productivity are leveraging technology and are becoming more and more accessible.
Multiple tools can help sustain focus for a more extended period, and help achieve better results by smart work. One such great tool is Focus Timer?
What is a Focus Timer?
Focus timer is a unique hack to become productive with your work and get better results in no time. It is based on the famous Pomodoro Technique. Francesco Cirillo, sometime in the late 80s, came up with a time management technique. The technique typically uses a timer for the user to keep track of time and break the time into several intervals (traditionally 25 minutes in length). Each of the intervals, separated by brief brakes (of typically 3-5 minutes). Such intervals called a Pomodoro, Latin word for ‘tomato’. It is named after Cirillo’s tomato-shaped kitchen clock he used as a university student.
Focus Timers are essentially used for time management by a lot of people. It improves productivity by ruling out the scope of distractions and helping the practitioners focus better. Most of the users break down the total time into intervals, followed by a break. These sessions rotate regularly, and after some time the user can take a longer break (usually 30 minutes).
How does it work?
One may use a conventional timer to start with, but it is not the most convenient thing to carry around. You may use our smartphone application called Tranquil Focus which you can download from Google Playstore. It is extremely flexible and easy to use. The following are easy steps to integrate focus timer to your daily life and increase your productivity:
- Download Tranquil Focus from Google Playstore on your smartphone or tablet
- Chose a task or work for the day you aim to finish
- Start the focus timer on Tranquil Focus app
- Select a 25-minute timer (or time of your choice) for your work session
- Entirely focus on your work for the set time
- Immediately stop the work once the alarm bell rings
- Take a 5-minute break (could be a little less or more)
- Go back to work after the break and work another session followed by a break
- After fixed regular cycles (typically 4 cycles), take a 20-30 minutes break
- Keep going with the process until you are done with the task for the day
Why one must use it?
Working continuously on a task for long hours can sometimes prove counter-productive for a plethora of reasons:
- It drains you mentally and physically and you are way likelier to get tired and quit
- Scientifically, we can’t concentrate for hours without breaks. Such long hours render our work ineffective and prevent us from paying due diligence
- As the concentration level goes down, we either give up, rush the work, bringing down the quality of work
The key here is not how much time we need to get the work done, but in how we utilize/ parse the time we have at our disposal. This is where Focus Timer will help you.
How can it increase your productivity?
1. Improves your focus
It immensely helps in uncluttering your head with possible distractions which leads to subsequent procrastination. When you are working with a ticking timer you know that you can’t lose focus on the said task. But when you hear the alarm you know exactly that it is the time to unwind.
After using it for some time, you will realize that you have made it a habit to work with a focus timer.
2. Prevent Burnout
There have been multiple pieces of research to prove that continuous long work hours are one of the top causes of Burnout. When you have a pile of work in front of you, it is very tempting to sit for hours until we are done with all the work. Such a practice can cause a decrease in the quality of work. If you keep working without a clear schedule, then burnout is bound to happen.
3. Track your success
Whenever you tab the finish work session button, it will add the time spent on the task to your stats. It makes sure that even if you’ve worked for 5 minutes the time is tracked and you can view your stats for last week, lifetime hours, and time spent today.