14. How to Use the Pomodoro Technique for School and Work
Episode 14
Have you heard of the Pomodoro Technique before? If not, this is THE episode for you. If you have, then I’ll bet you haven’t heard it explained like this before.
In this week’s episode of the Learn and Work Smarter Podcast, we have a rich conversation all about using the Pomodoro Technique to increase productivity and motivation at school and work.
You learn:
What the Pomodoro Technique is
Why it works (there’s science!) to increase motivation and productivity
Various scenarios you can use the Pomodoro Technique
How to adapt the Pomodoro Technique to your own needs
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How to Use the Pomodoro Technique to Increase Productivity and Motivation
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them. :)
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[00:00:00] Hello. This episode is going to be a good one. It's going to be fairly brief, but you are going to walk away with a practical tool that you can start using right away to increase your productivity and your motivation now in this week's episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, we are talking all about the Pomodoro technique.
I'm going to explain what it is, how to use it for school and work, the power behind it - so in other words, why it works -a nd then I'm going to teach you a variation or an alternative to the Pomodoro technique so that you can use it to make it work better for you.
Now a little heads up, this is an episode that you might want to take notes on if you are driving or maybe listening to this episode without a pen and paper,
and if you're listening on your phone, I want you to take a screenshot right now so that you can remember what episode this is. You can find all episodes at learnandworksmarter.com.
You can also find them [00:01:00] on my brand new YouTube channels for the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. That's at youtube.com/@learnandworksmarter.
Okay. Okay. With that. I think we are ready to dump in.
All right. So you may have clicked on this episode because you recognize the words, Pomodoro technique, and maybe you just you've heard it before and you want to learn more about it.
Or maybe you've actually never heard of the Pomodoro technique before, but you are curious and you are looking for a practical strategy to increase your productivity and your motivation.
Either way, good [00:02:00] enough reason. You're in the right spot. Now the Pomodoro technique is a time management technique. It's a, a tool really that we can use at any time. And it can increase the level of concentration on the task that we're working on.
It can also reduce how distracted we are while we're working on that task.
And it can increase our motivation to get started on the task in the first place.
If that sounds a little bit like magic. Well, honestly I think it's as close as we can get.
Now, obviously I'm going to teach you exactly how to use the Pomodoro technique and how it works. But I have to begin by telling you that the tech- technique is absolutely nothing without a timer.
So do not even entertain the idea that you can do this without something that goes. Beep. Okay.
You have to have a timer. You can use a timer on your phone. Um, or better yet. I suggest getting one of those simple cheap cube timers. You can get them on Staples or [00:03:00] Amazon or Office Depot or whatever. But each side of the cube has a number on it.
And when you flip the cube with timer with, let's say a five facing upwards, then it automatically sets the timer for five minutes. If you face it, if you place it with a 10 facing upwards, it automatically sets the timer for 10 minutes. Okay. If you go this route, you want to make sure that you got a timer with a five minute interval. And a 25 minute interval because they do come in like different models or whatever. Okay.
That's really important. And I'll come back to why we need five and 25.
Okay. Next. Before sitting down and using the Pomodoro technique, you've got to know exactly what it is that you're going to be working on.
That means that you need to have your materials ready. You need to be sitting at the location, um, or maybe even the desk, if that's the type of work that you're going to be sitting down to do.
I'm going to talk later in the episode about other ways that you can use the Pomodoro technique for life things.
All right. So maybe the work that you're doing isn't necessarily at a desk or at a computer, but maybe it's. [00:04:00] I don't know, cleaning the house or decluttering your dorm. Okay. But either way, you need to be ready to hit the ground running, right when you set the timer.
Now that brings us to setting the timer. So the Pomodoro technique involves setting a timer for 25 minutes and working straight through that full 25 minutes without stopping. Yes. Even if you're on a roll, even if you're enjoying what you're doing, even if you're like, oh my gosh, I I can keep going. Stop. You stop when the timer beeps.
Now, when the timer goes off, you're going to set it again for five minutes. This is a break and you get up from the space that you're at, maybe it's your desk and you do something else for that five minutes now. I'm going to share some ideas of what to do, and definitely what not to do during that five-minute break a little later in the episode.
Okay. But when your five-minute break timer goes off, get back to work and set the timer for another 25 minutes.
Now, if [00:05:00] any of you are doing the math right now? Just two Pomodoro sessions equals one hour 60 minutes. So you've got 25 minutes of work and a five minute break. That's 30 minutes, 25 minutes of work, five minute break. That's another 30. That equals 60. Right?
At this point after 60 minutes, you could consider taking a longer break of 15 minutes. Some people do need that. But I'm going to say no longer than that.
If you are still able to rally and you still have work to do like you haven't yet completed the task, then you can continue with another 25-minute work session.
Okay. But my recommendation is that you don't do more than three. 25 minute work sessions. totaling 90 minutes without a longer break of 15 minutes.
All right. Now, before I explain the different scenarios that you can use Pomodoro technique for, before I explain what to do and what not to do during your break and an alternative like I said, that I would share at the end, I am going to share why the technique works.
And I feel that when we understand the [00:06:00] rationale or the reason behind something, okay. There's something that we're told works. We have more buy-in. And we're more inclined to actually take action on the strategy that we are learning.
So you might be watching this on YouTube, you might be listening to this as a podcast, right in your podcast app.
That's all awesome. And thank you for being here.
But none of this is going to work unless you take these strategies and you put them into action. All right. So you might say, oh, that sounds neat. I've heard of it before. Yeah. I'll, I'll try that. And then you never get around to doing it. And then, and then what's the point.
You're just going to stay where you're at. Right.
And I'm assuming you clicked on this podcast because you don't want to stay right where you're at. You're looking for a tool, a strategy to use when your, for whatever reason, motivation is dipping and feel resistance towards a task. And we, but when we understand why something works like in the backend, This is just my opinion, but I've seen it in practice too.
I think we're more inclined to go. Okay. Now I get it. All right. Now I'll buy it right now. I'll try it. Now I'll take action. [00:07:00] And now this will work for me. Does that make sense?
Okay. Here's why it works. There's something called the primacy recency effect, and this is a really cool psychological phenomenon that says that we basically have a stronger memory for things that happen at the beginning and the end of things. All right. So, and the stuff in the middle is kind of a blur, really.
So for example, let's say that you're having a party, a dinner party for a hundred people, and we would likely remember the names and the order of the people who showed up at the party first and the names and the order of the people who either left last or, you know, with the last to leave.
The order of the guest arrival in the middle would be more of a blur. If you're using the Pomodoro technique, you're essentially giving yourself more beginnings and more ends, right?
Because the start and end of each 25 minute interval is a beginning and an end. Right. And each of these beginnings and ends is an opportunity for you to retain whatever it is that you're working on or learning or studying or writing or doing. Right. Does that make sense?
So, for example, let's say that you were going to use the Pomodoro [00:08:00] technique to study.
Instead of studying for one hour, which essentially only gives you one beginning in one end, it would be so much better, better to study in two separate 25 minute periods, because that gives you four beginnings and ends. Does that make sense, even though it's the same amount of time, it's still 60 minutes.
You get four beginnings and ends.
Now another example would be, let's say you're trying to read something. Maybe it's for school or work or pleasure. If you read whatever it is that you're reading, using the Pomodoro technique, you would retain more of the information, the more beginnings and ends you have, .
All right. So let's say though, do you have like an hour of reading to do, you're better off to break that into 2 25 minute sessions with a five minute break in between, versus reading straight through for 60 minutes, because you will retain more information the more beginnings and ends we have.
Again, this is called the primacy recency effect and it really is the backbone behind the Pomodoro technique.
Next let's talk about how the Pomodoro technique increases motivation. Like it's, [00:09:00] that's part of where its power comes from.
This works in a couple of different ways. So first it is so much easier to initiate a task, especially if it's a task that we've been avoiding, if we know we're only going to do it for 25 minutes. Like it's just 25 minutes. We can do anything for 25 minutes. Right?
But if we were to dive into a challenging task and again, perhaps one that we've been resisting right, and there's no stopping point insight, there's no ending point, then it can be really impossible sometimes to even get started in the first place.
But when we know there's a definite stopping point twenty-five minutes, insight. We can usually rally.
Now another way that the Pomodoro technique increases our motivation is that it adds an element of urgency.
There's this sense of like, I have to beat the clock or the timer is about to beep and I've got to get through this task right before it does that. And you might think this sounds really silly as you listened to this.
Like, I am not going to care about the beep, but I [00:10:00] challenge you to use the Pomodoro technique, with a timer, of course, and then come back to me and tell me that you didn't get some sense of urgency by the gamification of using an alarm. It works. Okay. Don't knock it till you try it.
In my online course, schoolhabits university, I teach the Pomodoro technique as well as a few other clock based time management techniques that tap into motivation, the exact same way.
If you want to learn more about that schoolhabitsuniversity.com.
Now, I'm not here to talk about the course, but inside schoolhabits university I talk about the Pomodoro technique and I share different alternatives and adjustments that we can make to the technique based on the task that we're trying to do based on your learning style, your learning preference, based on Whether you have ADHD or not things like that.
But in this episode, I'm going to share one of those alternatives.
And that is that we have the option to change up the length of the work and rest intervals.
We have the option to change up, and this is a ratio that [00:11:00] I like to suggest to students. Is that the work ratio, the work interval, can be 50 minutes, five, zero. Followed by a 10 minute break. Okay.
So that is essentially doubling each of the work and, um, break intervals. If you do the math.
This alternative is not for everybody. It's also not for all situations and all types of work. It really depends. It's one of those things where you're the experiment and the experimenter. Right. So you got to try it for yourself.
It might be helpful for activities like writing an essay or writing reports, maybe doing administration work like replying to emails, or something besides studying, because to be honest, the 25 five ratio is brilliant for learning new information.
And that is the one that I would recommend if you're studying.
I mentioned earlier that we would talk a little bit about what to do during the break, whether you're taking a five minute break or you're doubling it in doing the 10 minute break, it is so important that you remove yourself from the location where you're doing your work.
If you are sitting in a desk, get up [00:12:00] and go to the bathroom or walk into another room.
It is important to change the environment so that it feels like a real rest.
Okay. It's also absolutely critical not to do anything that is going to trigger a strong emotion during the break.
Now, obviously that means avoiding social media, right. Or anything that has the potential to make you feel really positive or really negative or really anything in any way. Here's why.
When we activate strong emotions during a break, it is extremely difficult to bring our cognitive resources back to the task when it's time to return to the working interval.
Now some other ideas for your break, other than, you know, doing anything that's emotionally triggering could be to get a snack, uh, to walk around, to pet your cat, to go to the bathroom. To read something neutral. I don't know, like, uh, something to do with sports or something, not the news.
All right.
Now, another reason I want you to avoid doing anything that's emotionally triggering during breaks is that not only is it really hard to get [00:13:00] back into the task that we were working on, but it's also really difficult to pull ourselves away from the thing, the emotionally triggering thing that sucked us in.
So it's like we're being repelled from the task that we were working on and we're being pulled into a task that we shouldn't be working on.
Does that make sense? And then honestly, if you're anything like me, I wouldn't even hear the five minute timer go off. Right. If I'm watching. If I'm watching a cat video. Right. If I'm watching a video of a cat snuggling with a monkey, that gets me every time. I think a fire alarm could go off and I wouldn't even hear it.
Okay. But maybe that's just me.
. All right. So let's talk about the different scenarios that the Pomodoro technique is really good for.
Honestly, the options are limitless.
And really, as I already explained, it is brilliant for studying and for knowledge acquisition.
It's also brilliant for cognitively demanding tasks like reading and writing and thinking and planning.
Now, outside the context of work and school, you [00:14:00] can use it to clean your house. Uh, to do the laundry, to declutter your closet, to finally sort through all the paper in a filing cabinet that you've been feeling resistant to.
In fact, anything that you've been feeling resistant to use the Pomodoro technique, and you'll find that like it lowers your resistance because again, we think to ourselves, This is only 25 minutes. We can do anything for 25 minutes.
Now I hope you have found this helpful. I would love so much if you can leave a review, if you're listening to this podcast on an app, or if you want to go over to YouTube and if you're watching it there. Subscribed to this show over on YouTube.
It would help my ego a little bit. I used to put all these videos on my school habits channel. Which, you know, has a whole bunch of followers.
And now I decided to remove all those videos.
If you've been wondering and wondering where these have gone, I removed them from my school habits channel, and they're now on its own little baby channel. So it could use a little love over there. But anyway, don't forget also, you can submit your own questions to be answered on future Q and A monthly episodes of [00:15:00] the Learn and Work Smarter podcast.
Learnandworksmarter.com.
There's a form on the homepage where you can submit questions and I will answer them. I appreciate you.
And remember. Never stop learning.
