Mário Andrade

The Pomodoro Technique was created and developed by Francesco Cirillo during the late 80s and early 90s as a form of increasing productivity and reducing stress levels in his life. It has than been developed in order to help other people and to be applied in teamwork.

The technique can be applied to practically anything you are doing and consists on disciplining yourself following the Pomodoro rules. You basically break tasks down in minutes time and when you reach a certain limit you must take time to yourself.

My co-worker Catarina introduced me to the Pomodoro Technique, she found it quite interesting and a bit funny since Pomodoro means tomato in Italian. I decided to take a deeper look into the technique on my extremely short free time and test the results. This post is based on my 2 week experience of the Pomodoro Technique trying to GTD in my personal projects and life.

The Pomodoro Method

Like I mentioned the Pomodoro Technique has rules you must respect in order for the technique to be effective.

Rule #1
The most important rule and also the most basic one is knowing that 1 Pomodoro is equivalent to 25 minutes and you cannot subtract or add any minutes to it.
During these 25 minutes you must do only the task you committed yourself to do with no distractions and no breaks.

Rule #2
After each 25 minute period you must take 5 minutes off to relax.
You are not allowed to talk about work or engage in any activity that will require any mental effort such as making phone calls or writing emails that will require you to make decisions, etc… This is time for you to relax and completely disconnect from what you where doing, even if you did not finish it.

When you go back to an unfinished task reset the clock to 25 minutes and start the Pomodoro process from
the beginning. This means that the task you are doing will now last 2 Pomodoros (two 25 minute periods).

When you reach 4 Pomodoros (four 25 minute periods) increase the break to 15-30 minutes.

The way of the Pomodoro

Over the past two weeks I have been applying the Pomodoro Technique to myself and I’ve found extremely complicated to respect the 25 minute rule during the first 3-5 days but I managed.

The improvement is visible mostly on myself and on organization aspects like knowing exactly how much time I took to accomplish tasks and knowing that I was able to know exactly how much they cost.
On the other hand when I was working from 9pm I knew that I would get tired, slower and less motivated around 11pm so knowing that and breaking a coding process every 25 minutes isn’t the smartest thing to do.
But take in consideration each case should be handled as a single case but you must respect rule #1 do the Pomodoro Technique.

The hardest part is disciple, making yourself follow the rules but the the results are gratifying. You will sleep better, get things done and have them under control. Trust me, I have a rough time dealing with anxiety and this technique has helped.

Resources

I advise you to visit The Pomodoro Technique Website and download the free e-book complete with helpful sheets you can use with the Pomodoro Technique. It’s an excellent reading and will teach you The Pomodoro Technique and how to implement it to yourself and you team.

I use an Adobe Air based Application called Pomodairo which is a timer created to be used when applying the Pomodoro Technique.