Focus in 25 minutes

Do you ever get to a point at work where you can’t stay focused and find yourself mindlessly browsing email and the internet? That used to happen to me fairly often, and there was another effect I’ll get to later. Lately I’ve been trying the Pomodoro Technique, which @filemon put me onto, and I have to say it really helps.

Pomodoro takes its name from a tomato-shaped kitchen timer. In Czech kitchens I’ve more often seen an egg-shaped one, though anything’s possible, since my culinary skills stop at making tea.
The technique consists of five steps.

• Choose a task.
• Set a timer for 25 minutes.
• Work on the task for 25 minutes.
• Take a four-minute break when the time is up.
• After four Pomodoros, or four lots of 25 minutes, take a 20-minute break.

There are several rules to follow during those steps, two of them essential. First, don’t step away from the task during the 25 minutes. If you absolutely must, because your boss needs something, someone comes to bother you, or lunch at the Chinese restaurant didn’t agree with you and you need the restroom, abandon the Pomodoro. Reset the timer and start again a little later. Second, when the 25 minutes end, let the keyboard drop out of your hands and do something else for four minutes or twenty if it’s the longer break.

There are more rules, and ways of handling things like suddenly remembering another task that has to get done right away. I highly recommend the book, a free PDF download from Francesco Cirillo, who devised the technique.

Observations

Once I learned to spend my breaks doing something genuinely different, reading email, checking Twitter or picking up the newspaper on my desk, and especially to put the task out of my mind, I started getting those aha moments. It’s happened many times, especially when programming. “That’s nonsense, you can’t do it that way,” or “Damn, this and that still need doing. This task isn’t as easy as I thought.”

When I’m finishing a task I often miss something. Even if I think I’m a minute from done, I never keep going once the Pomodoro ends. I take the break and finish it in the next one. Plenty of times that minute has turned into a whole additional Pomodoro because I’d missed something.

I tried several Pomodoro apps and the winner on Mac OS was Pomodoro Desktop because it really is just a timer.

Trying Pomodoro is simple. It just takes a little discipline, and it works. I feel less often like I need to switch my brain off for a whole hour after four hours of intense coding. I also make fewer mistakes because alternating between focusing and stepping back helps me see the broader consequences.