How To Use The Pomodoro Technique
Here is a scenario for you:
It is a week before the big test and you know how important it is that you do well. You decide to dedicate the whole week to studying (and sleeping). Just then, your friends invite you to hang out. After some debating, you decide that you still have 7 days left and decide to take them up on that offer.
The next day you are ready to study, but after delaying for 3 hours (because of the other important stuff you had to do) you can’t seem to concentrate. After trying for an hour you barely remember anything and decide to call it quits for today.
The next day, just when you are ready to study, your mother calls and needs your help, and then…
Okay I will stop, you get the point. I don’t know about you, but every time I decide to study there is always something in my way, preventing me from starting. Even when I manage to start studying there is always something that catches my attention, breaking my concentration.
However, after using the Pomodoro technique most of those problems went away(this sounds like one of those advertisements). I don’t really remember where I first heard of this technique, but after using it for the first time I fell in love with it and have been using it ever since.
The Pomodoro technique can be simplified in just five steps:
- Pick a material you want (more like have to) to study
- Set a timer to 25 minutes
- Study until the timer hits zero
- Take a 5-minute break
- Repeat
After going through four cycles you can take a 15-minute break, and then start from the beginning again.
If you think this technique is too simple, well it is. You can say that its simplicity is one of its biggest strengths.
You will see good results if you want to use the Pomodoro technique in this state. However, I have found that you can optimize each of these 5 steps, just by trying to change a few things. So here are the conclusions I came up with after doing so.
Step 1
I recommend that you have a few things you want to study. If you finish one material you may want to continue studying. While you search for new material your concentration can break, making it harder to start again. If you already know what you are going to study ahead of time you can prepare for this scenario.
Step 2
A time of 25 minutes per session is close to ideal for me (I don’t know if this is the case for others). But you can adjust the time to suit your needs. Even if most of my sessions are 25 minutes (I estimate around 90%) there are times that I get so focused that it becomes too little time.
You can increase the timer to 30 minutes, or up to however much you like (I don’t ever do more than 45 minutes because my concentration starts slipping after that). On the other hand, if I can’t concentrate for a long time (usually due to lack of sleep), I shorten the duration of each Pomodoro (the lowest I ever go is 15 minutes).
If you have a hard time starting, you can set your first session to 5 minutes.
After this one session, most of the time I find it easy to continue after the 5 minutes is up so I add 20 minutes to the timer and continue from there.
Step 3
Study until the timer hits zero.
This one sentence is the most important on this whole page. The timer is there to remind you that no matter what you want to do, you can do it when the timer runs out. After that, whether you want more water to drink, or you want to go to the toilet, you can.
But, do it on your break, never during one of the sessions.
When the timer is ticking down, try not to let anything distract you, and focus on studying. Try blocking as much “outside noise” as possible. Put a “do not disturb” sign in front of your door. Unless absolutely necessary, don’t have a mobile phone anywhere near you(preferably not even in the same room, although there is one special case which I will mention later).
This one piece of advice is what helped me the most. That, for the time of a session, I am allowed to fully concentrate on studying and I can ignore everything, knowing that I can do it after the session is over.
Step 4
Just like session length, you can also increase or decrease the time you spend on break. If you increase the time for your session you can increase the time you are on break(if I study for 45 minutes, I will give myself a 10-minute break). I don’t ever recommend decreasing your break because there is not much you can do with less than 5 minutes.
When you take a break, first take care of any necessities, and after that, you can do whatever you want with the remaining time (literally whatever you want). Most of the time, I take a 5-minute walk (and it works so well, so I recommend it), but even if you want to play a game you can (make sure you play during your break, and don’t stop studying to play games 😃).
Step 5
The last step is to repeat what you have just done. You can change steps 1 (the material you are learning) and step 2 (the duration of your session). If you want to change to another material, you should already have it ready. You can change the duration of your session just like how I explained it in step 2.
After going through four sessions, take a bigger break. You can take a smaller 15-minute break or if you want, you can increase the time up to 30 minutes.
* * * * *
So now that I have outlined how best to use the Pomodoro technique, I just have to clear up one last thing.
I can’t just leave the phone in another room, what if I have to take an important call or if there is an emergency?
I mentioned before that there is one special case where you are allowed to have your mobile phone near you. That is because there is an app (of course there is) called “Forest” which can act as a good timer.
The main feature of this app is planting a sapling which starts the timer. While the timer is ticking down, the sapling is growing, but if you leave the app before the timer runs out the sapling dies. If you manage to stick to the end, your sapling will grow into a tree. And the more sessions you complete the more trees will grow. And (as I understand) you can compete with your friends to see who has the most trees.
Someone mentioned to me that this app works like this. Assuming it does (you can try it for yourself if you want) I know that I will never use it. First of all, I don’t trust myself to not look at my phone, and second, I don’t really care about virtual trees (sorry if I offended you).
There are better alternatives for timers than a mobile phone. There are plenty of websites (just google “Pomodoro timer”). The easiest method of all is to use Google Timer, which you access by typing timer in Google (shocking, I know).
Remember:
The Pomodoro technique is used to keep you focused on your studies.
The Pomodoro technique has 5 steps:
- Pick a material to study
- Set a timer
- Study until the timer runs out
- Take a break
- Repeat
After going through 4 sessions take a bigger break.
Every step of the Pomodoro technique can be adjusted to suit your needs.
