Pomodoro Technique, version 4.u.

No, this has nothing to do with tomatoes.

Published in

Ascent Publication

6 min readJul 24, 2017

As a Medium fanatic, I love the productivity posts. I love when authors recommend new mobile applications or distinct behavior to be more productive. It helps me discover new methods to boost my productivity. Because, who doesn’t want to be productive 24/7?

Oh, you do.

Well after reading numerous books and hearing podcasts on productivity, I have found some of the ideas redundant. And that’s not a bad thing. They are redundant because they work. They have been proven to be efficient time and time again.

An idea I see repeated time and time again is the Pomodoro technique. I have found much success using the technique. And I get that some people argue against it. You might think that you can work nonstop for hours. And that’s cool. But the majority of us, aren’t robots. We’re humans and have flaws. We get distracted. We need to answer that text. We need to check Twitter.

Pomodoro technique comes to the rescue.

How does the Pomodoro technique work? Well, there are plenty of well-written explanations on this technique. I suggest reading this post by Chris Winfield. He details the psychology and the implementation of the Pomodoro technique.

But the premise behind it is simple.

You do whatever task you want to do for 25 minutes straight. After those 25 minutes are up, you take a 5-minute break and repeat the process.

A lot of you probably heard of this Pomodoro technique. And if you haven’t, you’re welcome. But I don’t want to this to be another post on the technique. Instead, I will describe 5 tweaks/hacks that you can do to better the Pomodoro technique.

Of course, these are personal and might not work for you. Moreover, I suggest finding hacks that work for you. I believe no idea should be generalized. We all have unique personalities that require unique ideas. But I believe these tweaks and hacks can be a great starting point.

Eliminate the internet

The internet? Anything, but not the internet. Even though you’re supposed to be working on the task for 25 minutes straight, we’re humans who are not perfect. After 20 minutes, you might convince yourself to take a break.

I understand. I have been there. Even till now, I often find myself checking my phone. But, when you start doing this, the entire technique collapses. It’s not efficient because you’ll begin to justify longer breaks.

“A minute longer won’t hurt.”
“I already worked for 23-minutes, I deserve a break.”

So, eliminate the internet. Find ways to prevent yourself from using it. I know it’s difficult to escape the internet, but I do have a suggestion.

Distance yourself from your phone and a Starbucks. I know we all love going to Starbucks and working on our projects. I do it as well, but I found working in a park is great as well.

If you need the internet, this idea would not work for you. But if you’re working on a task that doesn’t require the internet, like coding or writing, I suggest giving it a try. I leave my phone in the car and find a nice bench at the park. From there, I either continue learning data science or work in an article for Medium.

If you do need the internet, or love Starbucks, I suggest downloading Cold Turkey. It’s a great Mac application where you selectively choose websites that should be blocked. I use this if I need to do any internet-related activity.

Forget the timer, try the stopwatch

You might think it goes against the technique. But it’s not. The idea is the same. The only thing that changes is the way you’re tracking your time.

So why use the stopwatch instead of the timer?
Because I love breaking the rules. No, in all seriousness, I wanted to see how it compares to the timer. I wanted to see if I would my productivity compared the stopwatch.

And what were the results?

Think about it. If you have a timer, and the alarm rings after 25 minutes, you completed the productive aspect of the Pomodoro technique. Thus, you have an urge to reward yourself. With a timer, I learned that my mindset is different. I don’t necessarily need a break. If I’m in a state of flow, I often continue working until I complete the task or need a breather.

Thus, the type of work you associate the stopwatch or timer should be specific to your goals.

Here’s a framework I like to use:

If I’m learning, I use the timer. I like this approach because I like knowing my progress. And sometimes, learning new material can be a bit tedious. Thus, I make myself learn new concepts in data science with the timer approach.
If I’m creating, I use the stopwatch. I use this approach because when creating, I have a general idea of what I want to do. It can either be a data science project or an idea for Medium. Thus, using the stopwatch works better because I don’t like setting any boundaries during my creative process.

Understand your behavior

If you’re like me, you want to be productive all the time. How many times do you go to bed thinking ‘I could have been more productive.’ I know I certainly have.

Thus, I suggest learning why weren’t you more productive. Of course, you might be setting the bar too high. But other times, it’s a matter of adjusting minor details. I like to keep small mental notes of days where I felt more productive than others. And from there, I analyzed this. Was it the location? Or was it the people around you? Whatever it was, pinpointing the origin of the distractions can help you understand what to avoid and what to continue.

Don’t hear music, hear Noisli

The icon on the far right

I know I sound like a hypocrite suggesting specific advice. If you enjoy listening to music and it works for you, keep doing your thing. In fact, what do you listen too?

But I can’t hear music and be productive. My favorite genre of music is hip-hop. Moreover, the rappers I enjoy the most are J. Cole, Kendrick, Joey Badass, Jay Z, and Nas. These rappers touch on subjects that contain powerful messages. More often than not, I would get distracted by their lyrics. This observation is one of the things I picked on from following the previous advice.

And I know some people suggest hearing noises that resemble a coffee shop or the rain. And that’s awesome. But when searching for these noises, I often get distracted by Youtube’s suggested videos. But this changed when I discovered Noisli. There’s a chrome extension which is the reason I like it. I click on the extension, choose what I want to hear, and begin working.

It’s 5-minutes, not 20 minutes

When I began using the Pomodoro technique, I would find myself taking longer breaks that I had to. One Youtube video often would become to three videos. That’s one of the reasons I don’t multi-task. Studies have shown that it’s costly shifting our brain from one to another.

So during my 5-minutes breaks, I don’t use my phone. Instead, I walk around, or just kick it back. I let my brain relax because that’s the sole purpose behind the 5-minute break.

Use the 5-minutes break to your advantage. There have been times where I had my best ideas during the 5-minutes break. So, don’t turn 5-minutes into half-an-hour defeating the purpose of the technique.

So those are my suggestions.

You can use my suggestions or not, but I suggest customizing it. You know yourself more than anyone. No one can tell you what to do and what not to do. You might have better ideas than I do.