Here are my conditions to read this blog post:

1. Do not think about Elephant.
2. Don’t use your mobile while reading this post.

I am sure for some of you elephant would have appeared in your mind or you have started cursing me thinking who am I to tell you. Controlling mind has always been problematic for me.

One of the lessons I learnt from my life is, focusing on bad habits doesn’t yield the right outcome. Focusing on good habits yields better result. It may happen that one can totally forget that one had bad habits. It works for me.

I lived most of my life as attention deficit person, doing multitasking and not focusing. My attention span was low. When one of my friends told me about Pomodoro technique (around seven years back) I didn’t pay attention to it for a long time.

Life went into reverse mode when I was looking for ways to improve productivity. I liked the idea of “Deep work”, I never read the deep work :book: but I get what author is saying.

Let me ask myself : Why I need this technique?

#1. I am attention deficit, interruptions carry me away and I never get things done most of the time. There is a whole lot of improvement needed in this space.

#2. Tired : There were tasks which I used to complete, but I had no ideas when to take break. Sometimes I used to get so involved that I didn’t get up from my desk. Even though there was a joy of completing task but I felt tired after completing my task. My minds doesn’t know when to take a break.

#3. Achieving more in less time was a dream - I believed in less is more theory but it was not real for me. We all know that we have one friend who gets so many things done in less amount of time, isn’t it?

I tried todo apps not one but many, also I tried developing my own weekly planner and bullet journals. I have had moderate amount of success in bullet journals, but things turned around when I started using Pomodoro technique. Since I have used Pomodoro timers for a while and have achieved fair amount of focus I thought to share the biggest secret hidden in Pomodoro Technique

“Leanest way to accomplish a task”.

If I give myself 2 hours to write about a topic, than I will spend two hours and thinking and researching. I may end up doing lot of unnecessary things. What will happen If I allocate myself only 25 minutes to write about a topic?

I will focus on writing most important things right? Things that matter.

It is equivalent to setting up a contract for the mind. When a pomodoro timer is running in front of me I can not think anything else for a period of 25 minutes. This contract is the beginning to produce lean outcome in shortest possible time.

Constraint and contract is the way to teach our mind to focus. Probably that’s the reason why most of startups produce an unimaginable output because they have limited resources.

Achieving Bigger Objectives

Once I learnt he basics of Pomodoro technique I started thinking of bigger goals/objective and breaking them into pieces. For e.g. here is my goal: Create a blog and write regularly about Productivity, UX Design and any other aspect of life.

If I decompose my blogging goal to monthly goal it comes to, writing eight blog posts in a month. In a week two post, manageable right? If I do this for a year, I will have 96 posts. That I think should be a good number for first year.

Here is the live example of decomposition of my next would be post : “Why UX Design”

Once I write about this than I would need another blog post on “UX : Deliverables”. Once both of them are complete I can easily share link to anyone to educate them about UX Design and outcomes of it. Its like getting prepared before I find work in real world.

How to adopt Pomodoro Technique

Here is how one can adopt this technique without spending a penny.

1. Download Pomodoro timer from your appstore.
2. Set the timer for 25 minutes.
3. Complete your task, take a break for 5 minutes.
4. Loop (Step one to three) until you have finished 4 pomodoros. Once you have reached 4 pomodoris, take a break of 15 minutes.

Official Video : Pomodoro technique

My advice would be to only invest if you have achieved goals and if you thinks its going to work for you. Most of these timers are available on Amazon.

The latest version of MiBand has timer too. As per my research Apple Watch has a timer app too. I use Ubuntu and pomodoro app is awesome. It automatically regulate breaks for you. Kudos to people behind the Pomodoro app on Ubuntu.

Bonus : You can use Pomodoro timers to control dumb devices like : Geysers and tasks like Boiling water etc. I used to always forget which resulted in wastage of electricity or fuel.