Having heard good responses for my previous post, 3 books to help you stop procrastinating. I decided to write about how I tweaked the pomodoro technique.
In short the pomodoro technique is to decide on a task, set a timer for 25–30 mins and work until it rings.
This is a great technique. But, I noticed this works for certain tasks. It’s perfect when I have to read a book or write this post. But, if I were to develop a module for a mobile app, the technique wasn’t effective. In other words the technique didn’t help me for complicated tasks.
The solution “Simplify” is something you have heard a lot. But I have more to add. It’s not enough to simplify. But, I would say simplify it logically.
When you craft a task , make sure it won’t need task switching.
Consider development, We often use a couple of libraries to achieve things. We go search for them and read about them while we code. Here, we are switching from coding to searching and then to reading. It’s a cycle. These switches drains our energy and the more we are prone to procrastination.
The key to achieve productivity is to minify task switching. Instead of coding directly. It would be better to analyse the task, search for the necessary libraries, read about them and then code. Each step done one after the other.
So my tweak to the pomodoro technique is simple. Just prepend one more step. Craft the task to have minimal or no task switching.
“The process of simplifying is complicated”. I am not sure where I heard this. But, something we need to put thought into.
I am such fan of simplicity that I can go on staring at the design of Macbook for hours :P.