Focus with the Pomodoro Technique

Whatever technique or method you adopt to manage your time (whether the approach I outlined, which is heavily inspired by Getting Things Done, or something else entirely), you’ll get to the point where your calendar says “Blogging.” Now what? You actually have to do the work. And maybe, on that day, you’re not overly inspired or are feeling tired.

Don’t let procrastination win. You want to gather as much focus as possible so as to make productive use of the time you’ve allocated for blogging.

Enter the Pomodoro technique. The Pomodoro technique gets its intriguing name from kitchen timers, which are often shaped like tomatoes (pomodoro means “tomato” in Italian). This productivity hack is extremely simple and can be used when writing for your blog, doing marketing on social media, or for any task that’s important to you.

The basic idea is that each of us can only focus on a given task for so long before we become distracted or too fatigued. This time management technique also weaves in the fact that it’s important to take regular breaks as you work (both for the sake of helping you stay focused and for your overall health and mental well-being). The Pomodoro technique regulates when you are to diligently focus on a task and when you should take a breather.

This technique is centered on breaking your time down into pomodori (plural for pomodoro). You start your tomato-shaped timer (or one of the many apps for it), and then sprint your way through that pomodoro, focusing on one single task on your to-do list. After 25 minutes of dedicated work, the timer goes off and you take a nice five-minute break from your work.

Once your break is over, you start another 25-minute-long pomodoro. This new pomodoro can be dedicated to the same task as before (if you didn’t complete it during the previous pomodoro) or to a new one. If you are seriously interrupted during a pomodoro session, you’ll have to cancel it and start from scratch. Make sure you are dedicating twenty-five solid minutes of focus to the given task.

Most people, understandably, have a hard time intensely focusing for hours on end, but they can muster 25 minutes of attention. After every four pomodori, you can take a longer break (usually between 15 and 30 minutes, depending on your needs).

It’s important not to ignore breaks, since they help you refresh before you jump into your next 25-minute pomodoro sprint.

Armed with the Pomodoro technique, you’ll start to think in terms of the number of pomodori that a given post or task might require. Thus instead of mentally allocating four hours to blogging, you may start to think of it in terms of eight pomodori per week. As you gain experience, you’ll soon discover how many pomodori you need for your average post.

If you’re new to this technique, chances are that you’ll be amazed by how much you can accomplish in 25 minutes of unadulterated focus. Over time, you might even train your “focus muscle” enough to start feeling that breaks at 25-minute intervals interrupt your flow too much. I personally use long pomodori instead (San Marzano tomatoes, if you will), setting the pomodoro length to 50 minutes and taking 10-minute breaks instead of 5. Every four long pomodori, I take a 30-minute break. I find taking a walk during breaks (especially outside, when possible) to be very beneficial for restoring my energy levels.

For the record, my average blog post is on the longer side, and it usually takes me just one long pomodoro (or two at most) to write it. I find longer pomodoro lengths allow me to really get in a state of flow without drifting away into distraction.

Even if you decide not to use the Pomodoro technique for all of your work, consider performing one pomodoro to kick-start your work. This approach will allow you to overcome the initial inertia, and momentum will carry you forward once you start.

There are applications for virtually every platform (including Android and iOS) out there. Shoot for one that allows you to customize the length of the pomodoro and ideally allows you to log how you spent those pomodori. Pomodoro logs can be helpful in becoming better at assessing how long tasks actually take you (and therefore allocating your time, or just deciding how much to take on). My bet is that you’ll find that procrastination might have skewed your perception of how long things actually take (unless procrastination isn’t a problem for you).

Some to-do apps (e.g., TickTick) even have built-in pomodoro timers, which are quite handy. This way you can assign your to-do task to specific pomodori and review how many were logged for a specific task right within your to-do app. Other to-do apps don’t have built-in pomodoro options, but some allow third-party apps to sync pomodoro data with your to-do lists. For example, PomoDoneApp supports many popular to-do and productivity tools,^[69] including Todoist, Trello, Asana, Wunderlist, and so on.

As a reminder, don’t get too caught up looking for apps and the optimal tools. It’s important to remember that even a simple timer application and a text editor would essentially accomplish the same result without all the bells and whistles. They’re nice, and I enjoy them, but the key value lies in the technique itself.

For an in-depth look at this technique and its subtleties, I recommend the book Pomodoro Technique Illustrated [Nöt09], also published by The Pragmatic Bookshelf.