The Pomodoro timer is shaped like a tomato but you can use any timer of your choice. — Wikimedia Commons
Time.
People claim there’s never enough of it but in reality, many have a prioritisation problem.
Time is your most valuable asset and being busy doesn’t necessarily translate to being productive.
In our pursuit to accomplish and accumulate as many things as possible in this lifetime, we lose focus on the more important tasks at hand.
For example, you may be in the midst of doing work or studying, when your mobile phone suddenly pings.
Distracted, you check your message and then begin scrolling through your social media feed.
Before you know it, precious time has passed.
Such activities do not have a clear starting or ending point so you can spend an hour or an entire day indulging in them without arriving at the finish line.
Never mind, you console yourself and decide it’s best to skip your daily exercise to complete your work (sounds familiar?).
Your excuse: “I’ve no time.”
As this cycle tends to continue, the physical (and mental) body ultimately bears the brunt of your actions.
This is where the Pomodoro Technique of time management – where you set a timer to do a task without disturbances for 25 minutes and take a five-minute break thereafter – can help.
The method was created in 1987 by Francesco Cirillo when he was a university student, after he was constantly getting distracted while studying. One day, he walked into the kitchen, grabbed a timer and returned back to his study table.
Cirillo set the red timer, which was shaped like a Pomodoro (means tomato in Italian), for two minutes to read his sociology textbook.
When the timer went off, he felt victorious, productive and less overwhelmed.
He says in his website: “For the first time I used time instead of running away from it. I decided to use time, spend it to take a break, favour my mental processes, allow my mind to organise the information it had acquired in the working time and put me in the best situation to start my next Pomodoro.”
While the traditional Pomodoro is set at 25 minutes, the technique’s real power lies in its ability to be tailored to the nature of the task, whether it requires intense concentration or more creative thinking.
The steps go like this:
> Identify what the task at hand is.
> Set your Pomodoro or timer to 25 minutes.
> Work on the task until the Pomodoro is over.
> Take a 5-minute break.
> Slowly, build on this and for every four Pomodoros take a longer break (15-20 minutes).
Every time you finish a Pomodoro, mark your progress and note the number of times you had the impulse to procrastinate or switch gears to work on another task.
If 25 minutes is beyond your attention span, set the timer to 10 minutes and work from there.
Apply the same steps to work on your fitness, especially if you’re new to it.
Start with a 25-minute walk, then take a break and if one Pomodoro is all you can manage, so be it.
For the seasoned exerciser, break your workout into 25-minute intervals with five-minute breaks to rest and hydrate. And please refrain from using any gadgets during this time.
Try it.
Revathi Murugappan is a certified fitness trainer who tries to battle gravity and continues to dance to express herself artistically and nourish her soul. For more information, email starhealth@thestar.com.my. The information contained in this column is for general educational purposes only. Neither The Star nor the author gives any warranty on accuracy, completeness, functionality, usefulness or other assurances as to such information. The Star and the author disclaim all responsibility for any losses, damage to property or personal injury suffered directly or indirectly from reliance on such information.
