When I first decided that I wanted to improve my levels of productivity, I became inundated with advice, both from colleagues and online articles. Some of the advice wasn’t so great - at least, not for me. Productivity is a very personal thing and what works for some, may not necessarily work for all.

One productivity style that has worked for me is the Pomodoro Technique. It first hit me because of the name (I’m the only person in my house that loves tomatoes, so what?!) and when I delved further into it, I realised it could answer a lot of my problems. I had difficulty maintaining focus and the Pomodoro Technique certainly helped me overcome this weakness.

Overview

Francesco Cirillo created the Pomodoro Technique in the late 1980s and involves six key steps:

Decide on a task to be completed
Using a timer (the original timer looked like a tomato, hence the name) allocate 25 minutes to focus on a particular task.
Work solidly on the task until the timer goes off
When the timer rings, put a checkmark on a piece of paper, or text document (this is optional, I don't do this myself).
If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a 5-minute break. We refer to the thirty-minute period as a single Pomodoro
Repeat the process. When you have four pomodoros, take a longer break, up to 30 minutes

How I Use It

I largely follow the steps above directly, however, there are some slight deviations, so let me give a brief overview as to how I use the Pomodoro Technique.

Firstly, I use it predominantly when I'm working from home or in a coffee shop/office space. If I'm working in a busy office with a lot of people around, vying for my attention, I find that despite my best intentions the Pomodoro Technique can suffer. Even if I have my largest size headphones on which silently scream to people "I'm busy, don't talk to me", someone will interrupt and the benefits of solid, focused attention disappear. Thankfully, those times where I’m working in a congested environment are far fewer than in previous years, which means I get to use this technique a lot more.

Next, I set up my environment accordingly. I'm sure to have a full glass of water or fresh coffee depending on the time of day. My devices are in Do Not Disturb mode and I'm sure to have only the applications open that I need.

Lastly (and this is the part most people miss) - I make sure that the task(s) I intend to work on is broken down into the smallest possible chunks!

That's where the title for this post comes from. I slice and dice my tasks to ensure there is little thinking to do about the task itself. I won't spend 5 minutes of the Pomodoro trying to work out what I need to do. There won't be those agonising moments where I look at the task and think "Hmmm, OK, I can't do that at the moment because I need to do this other part first"

Let's take this blog post as an example. I could easily have a task in my task manager that said "Publish Blog Post on using the Pomodoro Technique" however that would only lead to friction. If I set the timer and looked at that as my task, I'd wonder where on earth I would start. Firstly, I need an outline - how should I construct the post so that it's easy to read, what information should it contain? Once I have an outline, there may be different sections to the piece (depending on its length). Do I have an image that I can use with the title? What about proofing?

As you can see, you can slice and dice a task into several sub-tasks.

Create an outline for the blog post
Draft the Intro and Overview
Draft How I Use It
Edit the post with proofing tools (I use Grammarly at the moment but there are lots of options out there)
Upload and Schedule the post
Archive the post in my blog post archive
Schedule the next post in my Task Manager

Now that I’ve broken the task down into these subtasks, I will start my Pomodoro Timer application. Now I use an application called Session which I use as part of my Setapp subscription. Now I cannot recommend this application enough, it’s so versatile.

What follows is where I may deviate from the default Pomodoro steps mentioned in the overview. The outline would be completed in the first Pomodoro and perhaps part of the intro. If my timer goes off and I find myself in a sense of flow with a particular task, then I will double the length of my Pomodoro. Instead of twenty-five minutes of focused work, I will make it fifty minutes instead. This helps to eradicate the effect of losing focus on a task during my break and then regaining it again. There is an attention cost there that I will always try to avoid. Remember, all these techniques form part of a framework. You don’t have to religiously stick to them because an article says so, you work in the best way for yourself.

Breaking down the tasks in this manner will also allow you to make greater use of working with contexts as opposed to projects. Contexts refer to the materials, locations, people, applications, energy levels required to complete certain tasks. One example is that you may have an application such as Excel open. You may wish to spend one Pomodoro just working on a list of outstanding tasks that need completing within Excel. Or perhaps you could spend a Pomodoro solely making phone calls. It's pliable to your own needs and work strategies.

I love the Pomodoro technique in certain situations. It helps manage my focus and, with that, my energy levels and output.

Do you use it? How has it improved your ability to produce? I'd love to hear from you.