By applying the idea of timeboxing to personal task management, the Pomodoro technique was born. It was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. Staffan Nöteberg introduces it in his book ”Pomodoro Technique Illustrated: The Easy Way to Do More in Less Time” in 2010.
I mention the length of time “25 minutes” several times in this book. It is decided by referring to the Pomodoro technique. “Agile time management” calls 25 minutes “1 Pomodoro.” (*20)
Pomodoro techniques are roughly as the following:
- Create a task list for today.
- Estimate the size of the task by the number of Pomodoros.
- Start timer of 1 Pomodoro (25 minutes) at the start of each task
- Focus on one task without changing tasks during a Pomodoro.
- If an interrupt by you or another person occurs, record it.
- If you can keep the concentrated state while one Pomodoro, stand up and walk at least a few steps and switch the viewpoints (*21)
We often regard “time” as continuous. Cut it to a certain length and name it “Pomodoro.” Then, we can estimate the size of the task with the number of pomodoros.
Footnotes:
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*20
- Some people misunderstood that there is something profound meaning for the length of 25 minutes, but the length has no meaning. If you can not concentrate on 25 minutes, I recommend to shorten it to 5 minutes or 10 minutes.
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*21
- Some people with high concentration feel that 25 minutes is short. They tend to think that the Pomodoro technique is a technique for people without concentration.
- Let’s talk a little about my experiences. I was working on a tough programming challenge, and I did not finish it with one Pomodoro.
- As the timer rang, I got up and walked a few steps. At that time, I came up with a better solution than the way I was doing. I hurried back to the desk, and I tried the new idea for 1 Pomodoro. The problem was settled altogether. If I did not use the Pomodoro timer, I continued working in the former approach without finding a better way. The concentration makes our viewpoint closer to the problem and makes our field of view narrower. If you concentrate on a wrong target, it is a less valuable time usage.