Having begun my month-long iPad-centric lifestyle experiment and having found myself somewhat free this morning, I proceeded to install Denys Yevenko’s Pomodoro Time Pro app (free version also available) and try my hand at the famous efficiency technique.

What I realised was probably not eye-opening, but it did make me completely rethink my time-management approach.

Pomodoro works

For those of you unaware, the Pomodoro technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s and involves breaking up tasks by in interval of 25min — called a pomodoro — followed by a break of usually five minutes. Multiple tasks may be done in succession in each pomodoro. The idea behind this is simply that the mind works best when exercised in brief periods with sufficient gaps in-between. Every four pomodoros, a longer rest break (usually as long as a pomodoro itself) is taken. One other rule all pomodoro techniques follow is interruption or abandon: either cancel anything interrupting the pomodoro in progress, or abandon the pomodoro for a later time.

It all comes down to how you divide your tasks rather than how you divide your time. It is easy to divide time and then waste it.

Far from a gimmicky practice, pomodoro is a simple technique that is actually efficient. It helps you focus for a practical duration of time, rests your brain, puts it into action again because as much as we like to think, none of us have everlasting attention spans.

It’s actually called timeboxing

I realised this three pomodoro alarms later: how much had I accomplished? Hardly anything. And then it struck me that I had spent a massive 75 minutes of pomodoro time doing little. Efficiency has more to do than Pomodoro. And what it all started with was not Cirillo’s name-tag of Pomodoro, but a much older technique known as timeboxing, which is a key part of business project planning. The idea is to distribute projects in increments timed to meet deadlines. And that is precisely why the Pomodoro technique alone will not help you achieve productivity: it is not enough to work in 25 minute periods unless you have those pomodoros planned to the minute. It all comes down to classic time management. How you divide your tasks rather than how you divide your time, because it is far too easy to divide time and then proceed to waste it.

Efficiency is made up of five things

All this begs the question as to how one becomes efficient after all. It was quite shocking for me to look back at those three pomodoros and see I had not done as much as I had intended. If anything, the Pomodoro technique taught me that I was not managing time well.

1. No multitasking

The only place I multitask is on my computers: I open multiple apps, do multiple things and experience a sense of accomplishment. But really, a more zen approach is what I need. It is also most likely what you need.

2. Intent and planning

Everything we do has an intent, and every intent needs a plan. Usually we start off with something vague (“Let’s do X which I’ve been meaning to do since last week”) but we ought to make it more streamlined even before we begin: what is our aim, what steps are involved in our task, and if there is no order to work in, what is the most difficult one to plan.

Trying to think of how you’re working rather than what you’re working on makes you less efficient.
Image courtesy, Shane Adams

3. Prioritisation

Besides chopping up a task into segments, either time-wise or difficulty-wise, it helps to rank them in order of what needs completion first. In addition, knowing the order of difficulty helps. It is said that starting with the toughest job of the lot is the way to go. But this may not always be possible, especially if its deadline is further off than an easier task, so strike a balance.

4. Let it go (and stop trying)

Once again this might seem counter-intuitive, but worrying about being productive reduces productivity, as does thinking of time. Anything consciously on your brain trying to make you think of how you’re working rather what you’re working on makes you less efficient.

5. List, tick and stick

Make a list of the things to be done, not through eternity, but for today; make that list in order of priority, then do it in that order, taking brief periods of rest in-between. But the important thing here (and what goes against pomodoro) is that if you’re at a particularly high level of activity, you would do well to continue that work for a little longer rather than to abandon it as Pomodoro requires. Sometimes a little mental warm-up is all we need.

So what next?

Take things slow. Ironic as it may seem, working steadily in a singly focussed manner is far more productive than working fast whether on one or multiple tasks. So focus, reduce tasks to just one to three and finish it before moving to the next one.

All of this is easier said than done, but going iPad-only is helping me focus on the current task a little more than usual because, unlike on my Mac, for example, other tasks are not just within reach, beckoning you. Of course, multi-tasking is not hard when you think of it, but to start that second task, something should remind you of that task, even fleetingly, and there is nothing on iPad that does that like the host of things on a laptop.

We have all started to work, but often ended up not accomplishing as much as we expected. It is a simple case of shrewdness and not just making up our minds, but actually sitting down to work. Worth a try from today. From now.

Cover image by Jussi Linkola.

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