No ma’am! We will not take this.
I’m busy and often sleepy. It can’t be that I’m lazy. There must be a magical secret.
I don’t know Lela’s secret per se and we’ve already talked about Kerri’s extreme calendaring. What I do know is that some kind soul introduced me to Pomodoro this summer and it just may have changed my life.
Pomodoro is an app that looks like an old tomato-shaped kitchen timer like my Nanny had.
(PC people, I have no idea if this works for you)
This handily little helper lets you set a 25 minute timer to get one thing done. At the end of 25 minutes and alarm goes off and you get a five minute break before it asks you if you’re ready to set another one.
You can also adjust the amount of time, but 25 minutes seems pretty darn perfect.
I can do this. I can work in 25 minute chunks of time. I can focus on one thing for 25 minutes. I’m doing it right now while I write this post.
Screen shot of the app store for Mac users
Add those 25 minute increments up and you’ve accomplished 16 things at the end of an 8-hour day. Now, I’ve never successfully run 16 Pomodoro timers in one day, but the idea is nice.
I don’t know about 16 of them, but I did 4 of them last week and was amazed at how productive I was. Seriously, I think doing 4 was more productive then when I used to work in an office and had to just clock time. If we changed office work to the Pomodoro system maybe people would work less, but work better.
I think you might be right! It’s truly amazing how such a simple little thing has helped me. (Okay, that sounded like an infomercial – I am in no way endorsed or paid by Pomodoro – I just love that little tomato)