The Pomodoro Technique summary

For many, when it comes to getting work done, time is our greatest enemy: it seems to stretch endlessly while you’re trying to finish the first slide of your boring presentation, and then it flies away when you waste time surfing the web.

Before you’ve even managed to finish that first slide, it’s time to go home. You look at your to-do list and see that nothing got done; once again, your day was wasted sipping coffee, talking to your colleagues, and checking your email.

Structuring your work into little pomodori is so easy and beneficial that there’s no reason to not try it: you don’t have to learn any sophisticated techniques nor buy expensive gear, and yet it can help anyone rid themselves of the guilt and anxiety of procrastination while making work rewarding and motivating.

Using the Pomodoro Technique helps you gain back control over your day through focused work.

As simple as the Pomodoro Technique is, it only works if you adhere to the rules. The first and most important of these rules: There are only complete pomodori – no halves, no 80-percent complete, and especially none that you finish with a minute left before the timer rings.

Once you’ve started your timer, you’re committed to 25 minutes of focused work on that presentation. Do not stop under any circumstances before those 25 minutes are over. That means no giving in to the temptation of grabbing a quick snack, nor checking your email, no matter how briefly.

Once you’ve finished your pomodoro, saved all of your new work and crossed off the task from your to-do list, you must observe the second – yet equally important – rule: breaks are mandatory.

You should take this very seriously; if you want to maintain a focused mind, then you need to give it a break. This means that you shouldn’t waste your 5-minute break by checking your email or doing anything strenuous.

Simple tools are often the best; luckily, the tools needed for the Pomodoro Technique are so simple that you’ll find them in almost any household.

First, you need a timer. It doesn’t have to be the tomato-shaped kitchen timer of the original Pomodoro Technique – anything from a stopwatch to your smartphone will do just fine.

By now, you’ve seen that time is not your adversary when you use it the right way – that is, by utilizing the Pomodoro Technique. However, there are hidden enemies lurking, waiting to disrupt your productivity if you don’t actively protect your pomodori.

These are interruptions – anything that takes your focus away from the task at hand and shifts it to something else.

Thankfully, you don’t have to be a slave to these interruptions. Just follow these simple steps to protect your pomodori:

Inevitably, something, some internal interruption, will pop into your mind while you are trying to focus on your task and demand your immediate, undivided attention, like a child whining for some candy.