The Pomodoro Technique: How Tomatoes Help Make You More Productive!

🚨 PLEASE NOTE: The last section of this blog post contains spoilers for the “Busy Doing Nothing” Subscription Box. Proceed with caution! 🚨

The Productivity Series: Busy Doing Nothing

Welcome to a series of blog posts where we will explore a range of productivity and time management techniques and how to implement them within your journal or planner. Check out our other posts here.

If you often find yourself distracted when attempting to get a task done, or are put off starting when you don’t have much time to spare, then the Pomodoro technique might be for you!

What is the Pomodoro Technique?

The Pomodoro technique is all about dividing your time available into units of time known as Pomodoros.

Each Pomodoro is made up of 25 minutes of focused work, followed by a 5 minute break.

After you have completed 4 Pomodoros you take a longer break (perhaps 30 mins to an hour).

How it works

1. Decide on the task you want to focus on.
2. Estimate the time you might need to complete this task.
3. Set your timer to 25 minutes and work on the task. Avoid any distractions by turning off notifications on your phone, or turning it off completely if you can.
4. After 25 minutes, take a 5 minute break (set your timer again) and allow yourself to check in on distractions (phone/email/social media, etc).
5. If time allows, repeat steps 3 and 4 four times in total before taking a longer break.

Top Tip:

Have a notepad close by to jot down any distracting thoughts or tasks that arise during your focus period.

Why it works

• Setting the intention to work on a task for a fixed period of time is less overwhelming than the thought of working until it is done.

• Having “rest” periods, where you can permit yourself to be distracted, allows you to be more productive during your “focus” periods.
• Taking regular breaks will result in you being less frazzled at the end of the working day (especially if you are prone to “hyperfocus”).

• Breaking the work day down into shorter periods and allocating these to specific tasks enables you to work with the time that you have available.

Why is it called the Pomodoro Technique?

The Pomodoro Technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. It was named after the little tomato shaped kitchen timer that Cirillo had as a university student!

Implementing the Pomodoro Technique in your journal:

It can be really useful to add a pomodoro tracker to your journal for any project you are currently working on. This allows you to keep track of how much time the particular task takes (helpful info for when you need to repeat the task in the future).

In the spread shown below (created with the help of a Super Easy Stencil from our Busy Doing Nothing quarterly box) I have broken each tasks down into smaller steps and will record the Pomodoro focus periods and breaks using the circles.

Busy Doing Nothing?

To celebrate the dispatch of our June 2024 Quarterly Subscription box “Busy Doing Nothing”, we have been exploring different strategies for productivity and time management within our blog. If you are interested to learn more you might want to grab the box!

Want a little sneak peek inside?

We designed a bunch of supplies that help you incorporate different productivity strategies inside your journal. Here are just a few of the items we included:

Any new subscribers to the quarterly sub before the end of June will receive ‘Busy Doing Nothing’ as their first box!