I have a major project to complete this week, but I was struggling to get started. It was too daunting. I'd start working on it, but then get distracted by smaller, less meaningful activities. I knew I was wasting valuable time. My time!

So I called in some help from the 'time tomatoes'...

The Pomodoro Technique

I'd heard of the 'Pomodoro Technique', but never really given it a go. Just in case you don't already know, pomodoro is Italian for tomato. The idea is that you work in short intervals of say 15-25 minutes. Each interval is a 'pomodoro'. After each pomodoro, you take a short break of 5 minutes. Then you set your timer again, and complete another pomodoro. After 4 pomodori (that's the plural for pomodoro), you're allowed to take a longer break. I was excited by such short bursts of attention. I was also attracted to lots of short rests.

Choose your interval

Since my project involved a lot of reading and note-taking, I felt I'd make good progress with a pomodoro of 20 minutes. I didn't want to be too strict with the length of a rest, so figured it could be 5-10 mins.  

What did I learn?

The thing that surprised me most was how very distractible I am. I decided that during each pomodoro I could do nothing else but the task at hand. If I was distracted by something, then I was only allowed to scribble a quick note in my notebook. So I made a note each time that I:

• Came up with a new idea
• Remembered something I needed to do later
• Found a useful resource that I wanted to refer back to later
• Remembered that I needed to send an email to someone
• Found a reference to a book that I wanted to buy from Amazon later
• Remembered that I needed to buy something for dinner tonight
• Came up with another new idea
• Remembered that I needed to call someone later
• Found another book that I wanted to buy from Amazon later

No wonder I feel exausted after I've been working for just a few hours! 

How did the Pomodoro Technique help?

Visible progress feeds your motivation.

The great thing about this technique is that you make real progress on your chosen project. 20 minutes was long enough for me to make some visible progress, but short enough not to get bored with it.

This project I'm working on requires me to first digest the key points from a 700-page book about eLearning. It's a big book. It's a subject I'm familiar with, but the idea of reading it quickly, whilst not missing anything important, seemed impossible. But using this technique, it soon became clear that I would be able to read the whole book in the time allocated. Because I could see how many minutes on average it took me to read and make sensible notes. So I then felt more motivated to keep digesting it.

Distractions are deferred, but not disregarded

By noting down all my distractions, I wasn't worried I'd forget them - which would have still distracted me.

A rest is as good as a pomodoro 

I actually found that I didn't always need a rest. Because I'd delayed my 'gratification' of the distraction, I was then eager to get the distraction dealt with too. So I even managed to knock one or two things off the distraction list during my rest periods. I quickly wrote that email. I made a quick cup of tea whilst making that appointment. 

And during my longer rest period, I wrote this blog post.