The Productive Student

I recently discovered the Pomodoro technique for time management. Before you head away reading all about it, let me give you the gist of the technique, which is documented in a rather unnecessarily lengthy manner.

The Pomodoro Technique (Abriged Version)

1. Get a timer (or pomodoro).
2. At the beginning of your day, write down all the tasks you need to complete today, in order of priority.
3. Set the timer to 25-minutes. Work on your first task until the timer rings.
4. Mark a cross next to your task on the list, even if the task hasn’t finished yet, and take a 5-minute break.
5. Continue with your next block of 25 minutes.

The technique goes on explaining how to handle unexpected and urgent emergencies, and a lot more, so excuse my rather daft concision thereof.

Pomodoro and GTD

The pomodoro technique fascinates me because it suggests a framework for actually getting the work done that we so meticoulously organize when using David Allen’s Getting Things Done method.

GTD, in a nuthsell, results in the organized corralling of all the commitements in your life, into a trusted set of lists and a process for dealing with those lists. The idea is that you think through all your commitments down to the next actionable task, so you won’t have to do so later. GTD also suggests that once you plan your day, and look at your list of tasks, you have to decide upon which ones to actually handle based on time, energy, and resources available at a particular moment.

I think that’s great, and can stay that way. Pomodoro fails terribly at this. It suggest a fairly simple-minded approach of listing tasks for the day based on priority alone, and that you should work off thoses tasks in that order. I believe the single useful tip within the Pomodoro technique is the usage of a timer. GTD does this for two-minute-or-less-tasks, but Pomodoro suggest using the timer to intersprese breaks at the right moments.

Tracking

The final suggestion in the Pomodoro technique is the idea that tracking your “Pomodoros”, the 25-minute blocks, allows you to reflect on your actual time usage during the day. I think this is a very powerful idea, and tracking your time not only commits you to efficient usage of your time, but also teaches you to plan better in the future. It’s a way of self-reflecting on one’s ability to perform, and thus adjust future daily workloads accordingly.

One way to do this is, of course, by tracking the amount of “Pomodoros” used. My preferred method for this is re-using the electronic calendar. After a task, adjust your Outlook or iCal to actually reflect the way you used your time. This way, your calendar also serves as a log, and can be tracked infinetly.

In the end, we all have to find an amalgamation of these techniques that works for us. I think GTD resonates with a lot of us, and for me, personally, forms the core philosophy of workflow management – not necessarily the hands-on techniques it brings with it.