Boost Your Productivity — The Pomodoro Technique and Its Ultimate Appraisal

Recently we have written about multitasking and multiprocessing. I would recommend reading this piece, since it’s all about changing your perspective on how you work sometimes and why it makes a little sense to switch between tasks. In this article we want to talk about tomatoes. And why it could be important to have them on your desk.

What Is It?

The Pomodoro technique is a method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s (and named after the Italian word for the tomato). It preconceives that people are not effective enough and that small time intervals in which tasks can be done (broken up with a few breaks here and there) will help manage a workload. How does this work exactly?

You just take a mechanical tomato (or any other kitchen timer for that matter) and set it up for 25 minutes. What comes next?

• You prepare a list of tasks
• You set the timer for 25 minutes (this interval is called a Pomodoro)
• During that time, you do the work with no distractions or breaks
• You stop when the time is up
• Make a note about anything that can help with future improvements
• Take a 5 minute break. During that time you can stretch, eat, drink and take your mind off the task
• After that, go back to work and repeat the previous steps
• After the fourth Pomodoro, take a longer break — 15 to 30 minutes
• Continue in that manner until you call it a day

That flow and developed focus will help you achieve more. The Pomodoro technique lets you:

• Focus on a particular task (no surprises, no distractions)
• Pay attention to what you’re currently doing. Under these circumstances it’s harder for your mind to wander and take over
• Train yourself to do do tasks and parts of them at a reasonable pace, making it harder to go back to less effective techniques in the process

Francesco Cirillo

We’ve already talked about multitasking and what it means for your schedule and productivity (same article from the lede). Now let’s talk about Pomodoro and what it does for your switching.

As we previously established, theres is no such thing as multitasking. All there is can be boiled down to doing a few things at the same time, effectively screwing your plan for doing them at peak performance. That’s why it’s important to focus on what’s at hand. Using a mechanical timer in an open space environment (heck, even in close quarters) may be a problem, but the important thing is that you know how it works.

Is Pomodoro universal and designed for everyone? In theory, yes. Practically speaking, of course not. Let’s say you’re a content marketer, working on an article for tomorrow’s post. 25 minutes is not enough to complete this task. What can you do when you break from a routine for 5 minutes? You’re suppose to not think about work or anything related to it.

The good thing about this technique is that it forces you to do the job, even if the circumstances are demanding.

The bad thing — it promotes mental agility at the expense of being able to work more naturally.

Photo credits: Pexels

How and In What Way Can You Benefit?

Marketers (and this is a blog for marketers after all) are a creative bunch. They don’t always bend to the rules that don’t suit them. Pomodoro is great when you’re learning to focus your attention (elementary school and a little above I guess) but it can be limiting when it comes to adults.

Is there anything that we can learn from Cirillo’s approach to getting things done and still profit from it? Naturally we can… and below you’ll find a list that can help. Everything is based directly on my personal experience, so I hope that means more to you than just another internet know-it-all guy in B2B content marketing. ;)

1. Draw from Scrum. This agile framework is focused on managing workload. It emphasises software development but it can be translated to almost any industry, because it’s — you guessed it — flexible.

Scrum teaches us responsibility, awareness, human skills and the ability to prioritize. OK, that last phrase was crawling with hot keywords, almost like I wanted to sell you a used car or a way to get easy money from dealing with a Nigerian prince ;) All jokes aside, Scrum is great. It teaches us how to use a sprint as a unit of productivity. From my experience, the best ones are always weekly. That way a team can track progress, produce increments (progress on tasks) and still be to not loose the end zone. Just think of a sprint like it’s a Pomodoro, but instead of lasting 25 minutes, it lasts 5 days. You can do more when planning your week this way — you’re not wasting time.

2. Take mini-Pomodoros, each one of them lasting one day or a few hours. Today I’ll have to send mail, finish a blog article from yesterday, talk with John about the AdWords budget and choose a landing page builder. It has to be flexible, have a lot of useful features, integrations with 3rd party marketing apps and the ability to share projects among co-workers. All in one day. Is it manageable? Sure it is. Break it all down to smaller intervals. You have 3 hours to write an article. 1 hour to send mail. 1 hour to convince John to increase the budget on promotion and then some to make a conscious decision on what you’re going to use to speed up marketing campaigns and increase conversions. Doable? Absolutely, you just have to plan ahead (and be efficient, detailed).

3. Don’t be afraid to put something on hold, but don’t make a habit of it, under any circumstances. Sometimes you get something done — a blog piece, a report filled with recommendations, a large piece of an ebook or amends for an event a whole marketing department worked on since the beginning of the year. And suddenly it all stops — your boss says that the management cut funds, the plan for the event has been canceled due to focus shift and on top of all that your Internet browser warns of unavoidable kitten death if you don’t stop using an ad blocker. Oh what, like you’ve never used a little embellishment in your content? ;)

4. Don’t follow all the Pomodoro rules, just principles. Among them are:

• Working with time, not against it
• Elimination of burnout
• Distraction management
• Creation of a better work/life balance

Photo credits: Pexels and Landingi

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Once there was Pocahontas. Then Darth Vader came along, accompanied by Shrek. Pocahontas had to make a choice between creating an omelette and buying more chickens to lay some eggs, but Vader broke most of the eggs and stole her money. Shrek thought that was funny, but instead of helping out, he accidentally sat on the remaining eggs, ruining everything. Do you see a pattern here? It’s like Murphy’s law — if something can go wrong, it WILL go wrong. That’s why it’s so important to prepare. In this case — predicting what may go wrong and ready yourself for the outcome. Or rather, a challenge.

This metaphor can be applied to office life. Pocahontas is this beautiful girl right next to you that has a brilliant plant for campaigns for the next quarter, Darth Vader is your boss that torpedos your ideas and adds more tasks to do within a limited time. Shrek can be a guy that just happens to be there — a funny colleague that never speaks in meetings and asks questions every time he opens his mouth, and not contributing by giving any answers.

The takeaway from this story? Don’t plan ahead above a reasonable horizon. Not only is IT a benchmark here, modern marketing (being mostly digital nowadays) puts things on their heads. Don’t let your boss ruin your schedule buy adding unforeseen things and always be prepared for a sprint. And about this Shrek guy… just give him a sidekick and some windows to smash.