Years ago a Buddhist monk recommended to me to set a bell every 30 minutes as a mindfulness practice. When you hear the bell, look up, bring your consciousness back to your breath for a few breaths, make sure you are aware of your body posture, especially when sitting in front of a computer, and then go back to what you were doing.
Yeah. There is a part of the pomodoro technique where you capture extraneous thoughts to then offload it from your mind. You look over that stuff during the 5 minute period to see if it was really as urgent as you thought it was. It is structurally similar to the Noting practice from insight/vipassana. My own experience with both pomodoro and meditation is that the mind will try to play tricks on you to get you to avoid doing unpleasant things by bringing up something that is more pleasant. That capture technique is a good way to manage that kind of stuff.
I used to use a notebook (as described in the original Pomodoro pdf) and now I just use org-mode in Spacemacs.
I usually spend the 5 minute break time meditating or working through some empty hand forms. When I do all of that, it has been very effective for marathoning coding without using external stimulants like caffeine.
Added bonus: using the Wim Hof (Iceman) breathing method and cold shower during the 30 minute break to oxygenate the body and brain. I usually feel like I just woke up fresh from a good night sleep, ready to go for another series of pomodoro sessions.
Lastly: I am working (on and off) on taking the principles and View of classical (medieval) non-dual Shaiva Tantra and applying it to writing code. There are a lot of good insights there that are applicable to working in a modern job, and it goes beyond mindfulness. Tantra, in both it's Shaiva and later Buddhist/Vajrayana versions have practices involving creating art, form, aesthetics, and beauty that is often missing from the attitudes towards work and productivity here in America. Tantra requires a solid foundation in mindfulness (among other things).
I'm hesitant to say anything about mental effects, since I'm far from able to objectively measure such things, especially since I haven't been keeping any kind of measurements or records. But it certainly keeps me from slouching quite as much.
Agree, especially with just a gentle vibrating reminder that turned itself off after a second. I've tried a few of these, and the problem they all suffer is obnoxiously intrusive notifications. It's not an alarm clock, if I miss one it's fine.
Yes, but only slightly and not enough to prevent refocusing quickly. In the long run it helps with overall mental stamina. It helps keep me from distracting myself with other things which take longer to come back to a problem from.
Reason why I stop working on a project is because after a while (or 10 minutes...), it just gets boring.
So I toggle between 3-4 similarly important projects a day. The excitement of doing something new when I switch helps me keep working (just on a different project).
Yes there is a cost to mentally switching regularly but it's worth it to avoid the much higher cost of watching Youtube instead!
Plug for https://complice.co/ for group pomodoro's. There's a hacker news channel. Pretty interesting concept, especially for mobile workers who still want to "chat" with someone.
Nice. For those who'd like a todo list to go with their Pomodoro* timer, I've created Lanes: https://lanes.io.
It tracks how many pomodoros you complete each day and how long you spent being productive. Plus you can see the aggregate # of poms completed by all users of the app (which I find motivating).
*Not strictly a Pomodoro as the timer can be adjusted, but hey that's what the users wanted.
I made my own timer after trying almost everything else out there.
The one I have now is a tomato emoji in my Mac menubar. When I tell it I'm working, it asks what I'm working on (so I can keep it in a logfile and do fun analytics on it later), then plays my work playlist in iTunes and updates a webpage[1] that lets my wife know I'm working for the next 25 minutes.
When the time is up, it stops the music and asks how the pom went (also for the logfile).
It's absolutely the perfect solution for me. I can't imagine finding an app that does these things that someone else had built. The ROI on building tools for myself that help my workflow has been extremely positive.
I built my own for Android (still on the store, but not linking as I need to pull it and fix) - love the Pomodoro technique, and it's quite a nice, simple challenge to build something for. I used it to learn the basics of Java/Android and get something functional into the store within 48 hours. Good intellectual exercise.
I use this http://martakostova.github.io/timer/ (compiled by myself) . It's good becuase it can run script, so i can sete myself to a DND status on slack when the pomodoro is running and turn back online after that. E.g.f for start you can use a script like this
Despite the snark of your answer, I'd be interested to know if you have any examples of science-based time management. It seems that this field is mostly trial-and-error, the techniques either work for you or don't.
Eh it's not like I intended pseudoscience as pejorative, but as in there some evidence in cognitive science that defocusing and refocusing on tasks help efficiency, but as all thing in this field reproducibility and other issues make it a tall order to call it scientific.
Just a suggestion, check the behaviour of the "do_it" div. If I click on it and then click outside without writing anything, the div will collapse leaving a blank area, and it will not be possible (or it will be very hard) to open it again.
After looking again, I realized uBlock was reporting that it had blocked something and so I took a look and it is Google Analytics. Just out of curiosity, why include that?
Thanks for making it. Like I said, I really appreciate how sharply focused the timer page is. If I were to suggest anything, it would be to get rid of the analytics tracking. Is Google telling you anything useful? From my point of view, it consumes resources, doesn't add any functionality, and leaks data about your visitors.
Is there an article outlining the idea behind these tomato timers, similarly to GTD or is it in reality just a simple system that I am trying to read too much into?
My personal favourite is Strict Workflow [1], which is a Chrome extension. It has the added benefit of preventing idle website browsing during a work phase.
My preferred behaviour for pomodoro timers is: start the break countdown automatically at the end of a pomodoro, but wait for the user to click to start the next pomodoro. Does it do that?
For everyone who has not tried the pomodoro technique (25 minutes focused work, 5 minutes everything else): give it a try! I'm constantly surprised at how much I can get done in 25 minutes.
I prefer this too. I'm strict about work intervals but flexible about break intervals. Usually so that I can use the break to chat to my gf, go for a short walk, or make a cup of tea or whatnot without worrying about going over by a couple of minutes and having to reset the timer.
Yes, that's what I meant. If the break does not start automatically, I tend to forget to trigger it, whereas if the next pomodoro does start automatically, it may catch me in the middle of doing something else.
I have a simple PS script to use at work (so I don't have to install any extra applications, plus I can customize it easily). It shows the remaining time as well as a desktop notfication:
https://github.com/maxlorenz/ps-pomodoro
The pomodoro technique always reminds me of this.