Pomodoro: Eat That Frog
Procrastination is a problem that all of us encounter on regular basis. For some of us it is much worse than others. Unfortunately I’m in the second category. Finally I have decided to take action on this as I have discovered an amazing technique to keep procrastination at bay.
Since a week I had been trying to make up my mind to do the project work four assigned to me at Amal Academy. Every time I mulled over writing this blog, the instant gratification monkey lured me into opening up YouTube and watch a gameplay video of my favorite open world sandbox video game. Every single time this monkey won the battle. I felt horrible afterwards. But right this moment I have decided to use the Amal principle of #juststart and use the amazing technique of Pomodoro I have discovered recently.
Pomodoro technique is simple; Select a difficult task in your to-do list, lets call it a frog. Our goal is to eat that frog by working in twenty-five minute cycles, putting a tick-mark on a piece of paper after each one.
So I chose working on one section of project work four assigned to me at Amal Academy which ironically is the exact same task I am performing right now, using Pomodoro method to complete a task and share my experience by writing a blog. I started off by setting a timer of twenty-five minutes on my smartphone. I chose the easiest thing first, which was to read blogs of my peers of Amal Academy to see how their experience was using Pomodoro. I read a few blogs which were actually quite good and made me appreciate the writing skills of my peers. The phone rang and I took a five minute break after putting a tick-mark on a small piece of paper. After five minutes I started again, this time selecting a slightly more difficult task of making notes for writing this blog. Twenty minutes later I was done making notes and wondered why on earth I was avoiding this task for so long as it was actually quite fun. For the remaining five minutes I started thinking about my introductory paragraph. My smartphone went-off again and it was time to put a second tick-mark on the paper. Putting tick-marks is actually quite satisfying. Currently I am into the third cycle writing this with the help of notes I had made in the second cycle. I’ve already written this blog thus far. I’m pretty sure the fourth one will be the final.
Learning Experience and Future Plans
The whole experience of following this technique is quite pleasant thus far. It is less than ninety minutes and I am almost done writing the blog. It looks like I will publish this blog and put the final tick-mark on the paper well before the bell rings for this fourth and final cycle. I will definitely use this method in the future as it has yielded a great result for me. But there were some distractions which I haven’t mentioned yet. Again and again I was tempted to take my smartphone which was lying right beside me, and start reading WhatsApp messages which always wastes a minimum of half an hour. But I reminded myself about the task at hand and the value of doing it. I even avoided checking my phone in the break because I knew I will get carried away and it will be impossible to come back after five minutes. I also had some unwanted interruptions during the twenty-five minute periods like going out to buy something from the market or getting a phone call from a friend asking me to WhatsApp him an important document urgently. So for the future I have planned that I will finish all the side businesses before starting an important task so I don’t have interruptions resulting in the loss of productivity. I would also refrain from using my smartphone timer as it really isn’t a good thing when your smartphone is right beside you while you’re working. Perhaps, using my mom’s smartphone would be better. To conclude I would say it was a great learning experience as it reminded me that the tasks are not as difficult as we see them, in fact, they can be quite fun.
