Fighting Procrastination — The Pomodoro Technique
“Procrastination is like a credit card, it’s a lot of fun until you get the bill.” — Christopher Parker.
Well, you all know what procrastination is. If you don’t, you still be doing it without even knowing. It is the habit of delaying important tasks until the last minute, usually by focusing on less urgent, more enjoyable, and easier activities instead. Sounds familiar now? One argument could be, if I am able to complete the task, no matter if it is at last minute or not, why should I be worried? Think of tasks which don’t have any deadlines. Will you be able to complete them? It’s necessary to fight it rather than just live with it. Let’s see how to do that. I will introduce a simple technique, called Pomodoro, which can be useful in this regard and will be sharing my experience of adapting it.
It’s just a simple schedule to follow, working for 25 minutes straight without any distractions and then rewarding yourself with 5 minutes break. Take 4 rounds and then enjoy an even longer break. How was my experience of implementing this technique? Well, I had a task pending since 2 weeks which I wasn’t able to complete, so I decided to pick that one up for this experiment.
During the first pomodoro, I lost my focus couple of times. I had to read the details about the task from an email, so instead of doing that I started reading old chats on email (a habit I’m really trying to cut off). Also, instead of focusing on the said task, I was unconsciously thinking about how much time is left. But after the first break, I started shifting gears and was really focused that I even wanted to miss the next break. Because at that moment, I was so deep into my thinking that if I put break at that time, it would have been difficult to come back to the same thinking. So, I feel you don’t need to fix these times, you can adjust it according to the situation. 3rd and 4th Pomodoros went quite well, and finally I awarded myself with sweets and Chai ;) after an hour. Then, started my second shift which I wasn’t able to complete. It was already late at night and I was sleepy so couldn’t maintain my focus and quit. The task was also not completed. At this point, I realized the tip of productivity from Shawn Stevenson to take a sleep between 10am — 2pm for better energy and focus. Planning to adapt to this very soon.
Well, next morning, I again attempted this challenge to complete the task with this technique. I was able to do it in about one and half hour, 3 Pomodoros, but this time the challenges I faced were the distractions of the outer world. At night, there weren’t many distractions as everybody was sleeping. But, during daytime, I was thinking about the text I sent to a friend and was continuously checking the mobile for his reply. I was interacting with my little cousins which was causing shift of focus. Even, I was thinking of writing this blog, and while thinking that, I was thinking about writing this thinking in the blog, seems complex, right? Well that’s how my thoughts are.
Challenges aside, this technique really helped me stay focused, if not stay focused, at least reminded me of staying focused on the task. And yes, I’m planning to implement it quite often.
