The Pomodoro Technique (Productivity Hack)
You must be thinking what does pomodoro mean? Don’t worry I’m here to rescue you. Pomodoro is Italian for tomato and it is representing the stop watch. The pomodoro technique was introduced by Francesco Cirillo to manage time while doing the daily to-do work. We all love hacks because they make our lives easier. So I’m here with an interesting productivity hack to deal with procrastination and to develop a habit of getting your prioritised to-do things done on time following time management strategy. Procrastination is a big hindrance towards our success and it inhibits us to reach our maximum potential and responsible for postponing our work doing nothing in life. To understand this concept, I’ve a fictional story to tell you because I’m good at storytelling.
Once there was a princess named Tiana. She had a best friend, a frog. Yes, you heard me right. That frog was her best friend, her guardian and her adviser. She trusted the frog more than anyone. They had fun together and wasted time doing nothing. The frog always told her “You’re the princess you don’t need to do anything productive. Just have fun and enjoy life”. Princess Tiana followed the advice and wasted her days doing nothing by putting back her work. But deep down the princess was not happy with it. She knew that she was missing something in life because she has realised that she was not using her potential to do the work which interested her and delaying her work on daily basis.
Princess Tiana was fond of cooking but being a princess it didn’t seem right for her to be a chef so, she hid this wish in the deepest layer of her heart and prayed to God to help her in this regard.
Eventually, she started getting bored by the frog because it was the frog who insisted her to do nothing. She decided to avoid her friend for sometime and to think of some productive work to do in the day.
In the search of some productive thing to do Princess Tiana accidentally found a book in her library that changed her life completely. While reading that book she realised that the frog was a procrastinator and not her best friend. She was very angry at the frog for wasting her time in useless activities. She took a hard step to eat that frog (get rid of that frog) with the technique called The Pomodoro Technique mentioned in that book.
By reading that life changing book she practiced the following four steps of The Pomodoro Technique to pursue her dreams in cooking and to be productive by managing time. She decided to cook one dish a day. For cooking her first dish she;
- Set an alarm for 25 minutes.
- Dealt with interruptions doing that work.
- Focused on her work.
- Gave herself a reward as a 3–5 minutes break.
She repeated this cycle four times until she got her first ever dish done and celebrated it with a long break of 25 minutes or more as a reward. She found this technique very effective. She remembered the quote from Francesco Corillo:
“One day you’ll be more creative, more productive and yet more relaxed.”
She worked productively following the pomodoro technique and was successful to become a skilful and famous chef of that time. She was happy and successful, enjoying life from a different perspective now just by being productive.
I got impressed by this technique and decided to implement it by reading a book “Ego is the enemy” written by Ryan Holiday which I’ve downloaded many days back but couldn’t read it because of my inner procrastinator.
I took following steps to practice this technique:
- Decide the task to be done: I decided to read the first part(Aspire) of a book “Ego is the enemy” using this technique.
- Set the pomodoro timer: I set an alarm of 25 minutes in my phone and started reading the first part of the book.
- Remove distractions: I removed all the distractions in my surroundings and turned off my wifi so, I can focus on reading effectively without any hindrance.
- Start working on the task: I immediately started to read the book with full concentration until the alarm bell rang.
- Take a break and set another pomodoro: After the alarm rang I took a 3–5 minutes break during this break I drank some water and looked for some messages on whatsapp. And repeated the cycle by setting another pomodoro until I finished first part of book(Aspire).
- Challenges faced during the task: The first round of pomodoro was very easy for me and I successfully passed this round. But my real struggle started as I went for the second round. I was facing difficulty in focusing on the context of the book for the straight 25 minutes and had random thoughts on my mind which distracted me from completing the task. But by fighting with my inner procrastinator I somehow successfully managed to complete the task with 4 ticks. After that I was super exhausted because why not I used my brain for such a long time. So, I took a long break and went for a peaceful nap.
- Learning experience: From this effective pomodoro technique I learned valuable things about life. By reading the first part of this book I was amazed that it was related to the Amal fellowship which I’m doing right now. This book follows same values as the Amal Academy does. And therefore, I got more motivated and concerned to try this pomodoro technique in my daily to-do works.
- Future implications and some suggestions: This technique is very effective to do the daily work on daily basis. I’ll definitely apply this productivity hack for my daily to-do list. But it can’t do much with the monthly or weekly or even with yearly goals. It can improve by thinking the bigger picture and setting the tasks accordingly. So, that your long-term tasks can be done on time.
This technique was new to me and I learned a-lot from it. By following this I can make my everyday productive and useful. I thank my recent Amal fellowship for letting me introduce and practice such an effective technique to reach my potential in doing daily work.
#productivityhack #pomodorotechnique #eatthatfrog