Review of the book- The Pomodoro Technique illustrated by Staffan Noteberg

The Pomodoro Technique illustrated  

                                    ------- Staffan Noteberg

Planning the process of planning seems to be a tautology, but that's what the book is all about. The book is for the ones who like planning daily works. It is for those who would like to make the routine work interesting, especially a schedule where there is a train of urgent unplanned works. This book gives enough insights that makes planning and execution fun.

 I have written the review of this book, after 15+ days of practicing the ideas mentioned by Staffan in this book. Trust me it has been a good experience.

While reading this book I learnt a very basic yet important point, 'Even the routine activities can become more efficient and interesting if they are planned in advance.' 

Bus Time

As a part of daily routine, Staffan spends 25 minutes in a bus to reach his office. These 25 minutes are very useful, because here he spends quality time in reading books. The distractions and the disturbances are the least.  His reading time on the bus is a time boxed, single-activity, single-goal experience with amazing results. The author says that he never learnt as much as during his morning bus trip. He manages to focus 100 percent on the book. Moreover there is a mental pressure of finishing the thought process before the bus stops after 25 minutes. Above all the brain has become habitual to those 25 mins.

Productivity increases when the concentration is high. So to increase the degree of involvement in a work, let me have no distractions and the time pressure will act as a regulator to have an isolated work zone. Staffan suggests to focus on a single activity for 25 minutes and then, after a short break, to take a new task. So the urge of finishing it in time will not only increase my quality involvement but also the feeling of being a winner after finishing it on time.

Mind wandering is good for Poets. For us it is not just bad for our mental health; it also hampers our work efficiency. I have experienced the sense of getting thoroughly involved in a work using Staffans methods.

Pomodoro is an Italian word for Tomato. Tomato-shaped kitchen timer was used in the 80's, which later got used by the university students in managing time based activities. The popularity went on growing from there on.

I have practiced Pomodoros of 30 mins and 15mins, instead of 25mins. I used the mobile Timer to set the Time loop. With the Pomodoro Technique, we can make time our friend, not enemy. Instead of feeling anxiety about deadlines for this hour, this day, this week, or this month, set a timer for 30 minutes and completely focus on the task at hand. When the timer rings at the end of the 30 minutes and you’re still working, it does not mean that you have failed to finish; on the contrary, it is a round of applause for the completion of the time-box.

The 5 to 10 minutes break after the serious work, gives a different joy.

Importance of Break :

Taking a break after the pomodoro leap of 30 mins gives immense pleasure. It surely is a break, different from my usual breaks. The guilt in normal breaks gets swapped with the pleasure in the Pomodoro break.

Do not do any activity in the break. The obvious activities that we do are reading the mails, replying the WhatsApp messages. They can be done after the break. For you to thoroughly enjoy the break don’t do anything that will keep you isolated from your surroundings.

Break Process:

                                                                

 In the initial few days, I actually lost the consciousness of the Mobile Timer that ran for 30minutes. But in every next attempt the involvement in the work increased and I could enjoy the isolation, while in work.

A problem we all often face is taking up works that we dislike. If such strained works are not urgent we conveniently procrastinate. Don't we? Procrastination increases when tasks are boring. If you don’t complete activities, they won’t give you any value. Of course, doing the last bit of cleaning up always feels boring.

But don’t think about how much you have left to do of this activity. Imagine instead how quickly you’ll finish off one Pomodoro. After that, you’ll be rewarded.

The pressure builds before a deadline. Long hours and working weekends are never productive in the long run. If I am forced to put in more hours than what I am comfortable with, I won’t be able to produce quality work for long. I can create a sustainable pace with the Pomodoro Technique rhythm by using short iterations of 30 minutes, by not skipping breaks, and by focusing on one activity at a time.

I thought of dropping Pomodoro technique after couple of day’s trial as it wasn't giving me any conspicuous improvement in the quality of works I did. But it was all because of my mistakes while using the Pomodoro technique . Mistakes get repeated over and over. Staffan does a 5 to 10 mins thinking on how the Pomodoros happened for the day and what better can be done in the next day attempts. I have tried it to a smaller extent and experienced increasing interest in the next day attempts.

As productivity has a lot to do with the time in which the work is done, it would be interesting to know the reaction of our brain in that time phase of the work

Succession and Duration

Think about two different aspects of time:

• Time as duration: “I’ve been shopping for two hours, and I’m still not done” or “Oh, I need to catch a bus in 10 minutes”    or “How long will it take you to complete this activity?” This is time as a distance between two points—the start                 and end points.

• Time as succession: Hen 1 laid egg 2. Egg 2 was hatched, and hen 2 was born. Hen 2 laid egg 3, and so on. These are             non-overlapping events. We don’t know when they happened, but we know the sequence. Thinking, planning, and            calculating future time as a duration is very unpredictable—at least when it comes to doing things that we haven’t

                done before in the same way.

For me and for most people, this property of unpredictability produces anxiety. Anxiety will most certainly lead to

lower productivity and may even spoil the result. If we can treat our work effort as a chain of events, it will increase our productivity.

Predictability or the decision making based on predictions have a lot to do with the data we have in front of us or in our mind. So the decisions taken instantly most of the times are risky. We need some time for the mental process called Absorbing.

Absorbing : Human relational memory requires time and sleep

As I don't have a very sharp presence of mind, I found  'Absorbing' a better preference, at least in the vital cases.

Relational memory, which is the ability to generalize across existing personal knowledge, is highly affected by offline time such as REM sleep or even small (awake) breaks from problem solving.

In 2007 Jeffrey M. Ellenbogen et al. tested separate groups of participants, each having achieved the same level of premise pair training, with varying offline times of 20 minutes, 12 hours, and 24 hours. Participants initially learned five premise pairs, such as “Green is preferred to violet” and “Violet is preferred to orange.” They were not informed of the hierarchical structure from which inferences could be made, as in “Green is preferred to orange.” Participants tested after 20 minutes could not answer the inference questions. But those tested after 12 or 24 hours of offline time showed a significant improvement in this relational knowledge, irrespective of whether they had slept in between the training and testing.

This explains why I sometimes come up with a solution after lunch or after a night of sleep!

The mood with which I work is quite important for productivity. The mind state although depends on many external factors, we can have a state of Arousal to keep ourselves pumped. If I remember that the coming week end I have to go out with my friends for dinner party, I get a feeling of arousal or for that matter if I remind my wife about her shopping, I see similar feeling of arousal on her face. Can I have arousals in my work?

Arousal

A new task always has a multi staged transition. Initially we have excitement and eagerness to see the positive outcome

Even if the situation is chaotic with lot of uncertainties it has the high energy association. As time goes by, we start to see patterns in what used to be a mess. The more I learn, the more interesting the task becomes. Then, when we know everything about it, it becomes more and more boring.

 Arousal is a state of heightened physiological activity which happens when we are in the spot light and we are sure that we are going to Rock the show. Whenever the work becomes routine, it becomes boring. I need to keep the arousal state alive all the time, not just to get better result but also to have fun while working. Even a 10 mins Planning of the routine work, which we are well versed with, can keep us in the state of Arousal while doing that work, which otherwise can lead to boredom

                            

While planning for the task that can be completed in half an hour, I have frequently failed in the estimation of the work that I could plan. Staffan has something to advice here. He has an interesting observation of the decisions taken by crowd.

Wisdom of Crowd.

Estimation is an important part of the Pomodoro technique.  Our estimates are not always correct, but the average estimate of a group of people is the closest. So a good idea is to look at the estimate through different angles. If possible look at it in different states of mind and then think of the average estimate.

The currency that is used for estimation is the Pomodoro. You must decide how many Pomodoro you need to spend on an activity.

While planning the works in the morning, one needs to plan for the number of Pomodoros. If the work gets done within the time  we can writes a ‘U’ in front of the work planned and if it takes more Pomodoros write ‘O’ in front of those activities written in the plan for the day. The analysis at the end of the day contemplates on the reasons and the factors for the ‘U’ and the ‘O’ activities.

By the way, this review that I have typed is with a Pomodoro runing and let me confess that I have taken one Pomodoro more than the planned. So the over utilized Pomodoro will be entered with a ‘O’ in my book.

Hope God puts a ‘U’ in the Pomodoro that he has set for all our lives. :)

Disclaimer:

 The synopsis of this beautiful book by Staffan Noteberg is mixed with the experience, knowledge, observation and the predictions of mine.

Vinay wagh

Bulls Eye, Nasik