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Pomodoro Your Way to Productivity
By Farah Farhat
Whether you are a serial procrastinator that tends to cram all your studying a day before the midterm, or an avid, high achieving student aiming to be the best at what you love one day, you have got to sit down for this and read what I have to tell you!
You will come across many different techniques to study, and people will tell you all sorts of things. Make flashcards, go to study groups, go to office hours, etc.
But here is what I’ve got for you: the best technique to study without feeling overwhelmed or stressed or out of time. This technique is called…
*drum roll*
Pomodoro
Pomodoro is a time management system created in the 1980s by Francesco Cirillo,
and try to guess why it’s called pomodoro…
Pomodoro means tomato in italian, and Cirillo used a tomato kitchen timer in university for this technique! Simple and straight to the point, am I right?
So this procrastination resistant technique ideally allows you to finish tasks while still giving your brain some time to rest every 25 minutes. Every 25 minutes is considered a single “pomodoro,” and this technique takes account of the fact that our brains have limited attention spans. Isn’t this why we don’t find a problem watching a 30 second Tik Tok but
find it extremely challenging to watch a 30 minute long youtube tutorial? Studies have shown that our attention span is also narrowing over time. In 2000, our average attention span was twelve seconds, but now our attention span has dropped to eight seconds. EIGHT. You know that goldfish have an attention span of nine seconds? Yeah.
Back to our conversation. Using Pomodoro has personally helped me focus on my tasks a little bit better. I am a daydreamer by nature, and I also used to love studying for long periods of time. Going for hours without a break decreased the quality of my studying, and that was substantiated when I saw my grades. But when I learnt about Pomodoro and began using it, my A-’s turned to A+ and my B+’s to A’s. I also stopped resenting the workload every course required and I stopped feeling tired all the time! I am not saying you won’t feel tired after hours of using the Pomodoro Technique, but trust me, you will feel less stressed.
If you’re interested in this technique, I highly recommend an app called 30/30. This app allows you to follow the traditional pomodoro technique or customize it depending on your own preference. If you want to use your own time intervals, I highly suggest you observe your productivity patterns first. Do you start zoning out after an hour of reading? Does your brain stop taking information after an x amount of hours? You need to observe yourself to know how to manipulate this technique for your own advantage.
But remember! Taking a break is important.
Walking around whenever you can and stretching is GOOD FOR YOU.
Acknowledging your hard work and effort is crucial!
And that is how you pave the way to utmost success and productivity!
https://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/
https://lifehacker.com/productivity-101-a-primer-to-the-pomodoro-technique-1598992730