The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. It uses a kitchen timer to break work into intervals, typically 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 Cirillo used as a university student.
Yo dawg, I heard you like interruptions…
It’s only an interruption if you’re already busy and productive. This method helped me when I was going through a particularly bad period and couldn’t get anything done. The end of the Pomodoro wasn’t and interruption, but a goal that I was relieved to reach.
Maybe surprisingly, it is actually a technique to limit interruptions, specifically because you are only working on your current task for 25 minutes. It makes it much easier to not switch tasks in the middle because your next time to switch tasks is less than 25 minutes away. For example, if you’re in a task writing a report and you remember that you were supposed to send an email, you write down the email task to do later and don’t worry about it because if it’s important than you will pick it for your next pomodoro. This allows you to stay focused on the report you’re writing for this pomodoro.
It’s possible that I was just doing it entirely wrong, but I seem to recall (from when I tried it years ago) that I would still get interruptions (like phone calls, meetings, and slack messages) but then the timer would go off during those interruptions.
This got me through college. As someone who gets easily overwhelmed by large tasks, saying to myself that I will only work on it for 20 minutes (I do a 20/10 split) made things manageable and also it kept me from gluing myself to the chair unless I wanted to do it which made it seem more like a choice. I would frequently get through a few intervals and then keep skipping the breaks as I got nearer to the end of the task. I highly recommend this technique to people!
