I am a mourning dove. Usually wake up early and after my green tea is ready, I browse internet for the latest. During such a routine, I came across Pomodoro technique in a New York Times article by Dean Kissik.

Pomodoro! I had never heard before.

English translation of ‘pomodoro‘ in Collins dictionary is ‘tomato’.

Pomodoro Technique

The Wikipedia describes pomodoro technique as “a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. Each interval is known as a pomodoro, from the Italian word for ‘tomato’, after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer that Cirillo used as a university student.”

According to Fancesco Cirillo website, over 2 million people have used the the technique to transform their lives. The technique involves following six steps:

1. Decide on the task to be done.
2. Set the pomodoro timer (traditionally to 25 minutes).
3. Work on the task.
4. End work when the timer rings and put a checkmark on a piece of paper.
5. If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a short break (3–5 minutes), then go to step 2.
6. After four pomodoros, take a longer break (15–30 minutes), reset your checkmark count to zero, then go to step 1.

Goal

The wikipedia describes its goals “is to reduce the impact of internal and external interruptions on focus and flow. A pomodoro is indivisible; when interrupted during a pomodoro, either the other activity must be recorded and postponed (using the inform – negotiate – schedule – call back strategy) or the pomodoro must be abandoned.”

Specific cases should be handled with common sense: If you finish a task while the Pomodoro is still ticking, the following rule applies: If a Pomodoro begins, it has to ring. It’s a good idea to take advantage of the opportunity for overlearning, using the remaining portion of the Pomodoro to review or repeat what you’ve done, make small improvements, and note what you’ve learned until the Pomodoro rings

Fancesco Cirillo (source: Wikipedia)

In her Times article, writer Dean Kissick writes: “The Pomodoro technique showed me how much of my experience of reality is tied up with my subjective perception of it. And it’s not an exaggeration to say that, by changing my relationship with and appreciation of time, the technique has brought me to some profound existential questions about whether I’m wasting my life — my fragile, fleeting life — on activities I neither care about nor enjoy. It has forced me to think about what I’d most like to be doing every day instead. It has made me see time afresh — as something we really don’t have enough of, as something precious precisely because it’s ephemeral.”

May be it’s time to give it a try!

If I decided to apply, my time interval should be longer. But even so a net time management concept!