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 do our best 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.
Multiple techniques can help sustain focus for an extended period, and help achieve better results by smart work. One such great method is The Pomodoro Technique.
What is 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 breaks (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.
This technique is 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).
My experience with the pomodoro
While I was doing my Masters in Business Administration, a senior professor from the Human Resource department of my college, talked about practicing the Pomodoro technique, in our class. He referred to it, saying that it is a great technique to deal with procrastination. I used to be one of those students who used to keep work until the last minute. So, Pomodoro because of its fascinating name as well as its benefits, stuck in my head. After that session, I went back to my dorm room and did my research on the topic.
I downloaded the application ‘Tranquil Focus’ from Google Playstore which works on the principle of the Pomodoro technique. The best thing about this application is that it adds 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.
When I started using the Pomodoro technique, in just a week, I could tell the difference in my productivity.
Firstly, I wasn’t really feeling the mental and physical tiredness after work, like I used to before.
Secondly, I understood the importance of having a proper break in between. I used to think of break to be a waste of time. Long hours of work without break render our work ineffective and prevent us from paying due diligence.
Last but not the least, practicing Pomodoro kept me focused and prevented concentration from going down with time. Earlier, when my concentration used to fall down, I used to feel like rushing up which used to bring down the quality of work.
If I have to sum up my experience using the Pomodoro technique, I can say that it made me realize that it is not the amount of time we need to get the work done, but in how we utilize/ parse the time we have at our disposal.
How you can leverage this technique?
One may use a conventional timer to start with, but it is not the most convenient thing to carry around. I suggest you, 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
