Pomodoro in practice

Do you ever feel at work like you’re doing thousand things at the same time but never finish anything? You start writing some code, then a bug report comes in and you have to respond because it stops QA from testing. You go back to code, but then colleague comes with a question. Then yo go to meeting. You go back to code again, but it doesn’t go very well so you start reading blogs. Then you receive an email you have respond to. And before you know the day is over and you don’t feel like you have really accomplished anything.

If you experience anything like this, stop doing what you’re doing and try pomodoro.

What is pomodoro?

It’s a focus (and time) management technique or put more simply “a way to have less distractions”. In its basic form pomodoro is like this:

• you do a task for 25 minutes avoiding any interruptions;
• after 25 minutes you take 5 minute break;
• if despite all your efforts, you’re distracted during 25 minutes, you reset timer and this pomodoro doesn’t count.

(Notice, that “pomodoro” term is overloaded, because “pomodoro” is not only the name of the technique, it also means 25 minute interval.)

The main reason to do it is that any non-trivial task requires a lot of mental effort to get into the state of flow (a state of mind when you’re really productive). Getting into the flow is quite expensive so you should avoid all the internal (checking email, reading RSS) and external (a colleague taking to you, instant messenger pop-up) interruptions.

On the other hand, working for 10 hours in a row is also not productive. It’s also important to have small breaks. I remember quite a few examples when after hours of hectic coding I realized that I had created a mess, while there is a much simpler solution to my problem, or even worse that the problem was wrong.

There is more to it, but in a nutshell pomodoro is like a vise:

• forces you to concentrate on the task by having less interruptions;
• forces you to have breaks.

(Another metaphor I like “pomodoro is your personal Scrum sprint”.)

Pomodoro in practice

I’ve been using pomodoro for about 4 months now. In three words “it is great”. In ten words “It’s not a silver bullet, but totally worth doing”.

What works

• I get more satisfaction. Having small tasks and accomplishing them is somehow more satisfying than doing the same amount of work without tasks (I think, it’s also one of the ideas in Getting things done). It works especially well on the most insane days because doing small focused tasks makes them less insane and at the very least at the end of the day you can look at the paper where you track pomodoros and see that you have actually accomplished something.

• makes the cost of context switching explicit. It’s explicit for me because I know that I’m doing a certain task and if I’m distracted I’ll have to reset timer. It’s explicit for others because they know I’m doing pomodoro and they can see my timer. (I use Focus Booster on Windows and Pomodoro on Mac OS.)

• less procrastination. Before each pomodoro I choose a task (or several tasks if they’re small) that I’m going to accomplish. If something has to be done to accomplish the task, I do it immediately. With 25 minute “sprints” there no time to procrastinate. It works especially well with tasks which are not exciting but just have to be done.

• time tracking. I used to track how much time I spend on tasks before using pomodoro. With pomodoro time tracking became easier and better. Easier because I do it anyway whenever I use pomodoro. Better because my time is tracked with 100% focus factor.

• focus factor. “Focus factor” a term from Agile (see XP and Scrum from trenches). What I mean here is how much time a day you can spend without being interrupted. With pomodoro you get your personal focus factor for free. On average I can do 8 pomodoros or 4 hours of uninterrupted work. This is 50% focus factor. (It may seem low, but it’s better to know the truth than to avoid it.)

• having breaks is relaxing. It helps a lot to keep focus while doing boring tasks because I know I’ll have a break after all :)

• it’s fun. It’s like a game, but really useful one.

What doesn’t work

• often 25 minutes is not enough. I haven’t figured out the reason yet. Probably, it depends on the time of the day and kind of task. When I do something really exciting, I tend to skip every second break.

• obeying the timer. When I started using pomodoro, I would actually start or stop doing task when timer rang. I don’t know whether I adopted pomodoro to my needs or I’m just lazy, but now I don’t care about timer that much. I can stop few minutes later or have a longer break if I feel like doing it.

• exploratory tasks. Pomodoro is great for goal oriented tasks but being goal-oriented is not always a good thing (see awesome talk by Daniel Pink). Sometimes you may want to enjoy yourself without thinking of time or how much you can accomplish. I don’t watch movies or read books using pomodoro.

• breaks can be distracting if you involve in a discussion.

• some people don’t care about pomodoro. Even though they know what it is, even though they see timer, they keep distracting me anyway. It’s not a big deal, just the way it is.

• since pomodoro is like a game, you may start cheating yourself to get better results and more satisfaction. For example, I noticed that I reset pomodoro less often than I used to three months ago.

Consequences

• I feel happier. Even if have to do something really boring.

  

• I have less distractions:

  • I turned off email and instant messenger’s notifications;
  • I check instant messenger only when decide to do it, not when someone sends me a message;
  • I broke email addiction. I don’t check email or read RSS feeds when I feel like I’m bored.

• I became more realistic in task estimates (at least I want to think so).

• I became more productive.

Try pomodoro now!

I started using pomodoro by simply typing “pomodoro timer” in google and choosing a timer. I installed Focus Booster and started my first pomodoro without knowing too much about it. You’re not going to lose anything, but there is a chance to get rid of distractions and become happier :)