Since last year, a large number of people have started to study and in their own home and must have faced a difficulty that EAD students already know it well: time management. That’s why the service – buy a resume online – has gained unprecedented popularity.
It may even be that, before, you were not the best person with deadlines, like here, but the fact of doing all tasks within the same environment harms our productivity. So it is important to look for ways to stay focused on the tasks you need to do and to be able to organize during the day.
Why pay attention to time
It is not only a way of working that has been changing but also the way of evaluating our work. If being in the office was important to companies in the past, remote work has brought the focus to task delivery.
This means that there are more and more organizations that are giving up control time-consuming, the time clock and break times so that employees can decide the best time to work, whether at home, at the office or in some coworking, the important thing is not to miss deliveries.
With time control under the employee’s responsibility, it’s very easy to get lost. After all, we grew accustomed to receiving these limits externally, as in the sign of recess at school, for example.
So, every day comes new techniques that make time management easier. To work and study effectively, maintaining productivity, one of the most famous is the Pomodoro Method.
What is the Pomodoro Method?
Created in the 1980s by the then Italian university student Francesco Cirillo, the Pomodoro Method is all about taking 25 minutes to do a certain task. The technique has some other rules that have been refined over the years to help focus on what you are doing.
Cirillo had this idea during the early years of the university. To clock the time, he picked up a tomato-shaped kitchen alarm. Hence the name “Pomodoro”, which means tomato in Italian.
Nowadays, there are many different tools and studies to make the technique easier to apply. But the principle of time separation is very basic and efficient for the most diverse tasks.
How can I apply the technique in my daily life?
The 25 minutes of focus is the heart of the Pomodoro Method, but it has other rules. These 25 minutes are the time you spend on each task or part of it, if it takes longer to complete it.
Every 25 minutes, it is suggested that you take a 5-minute break. This time can be used to stretch your legs, have a snack, go to the bathroom or take a look at your cell phone. This set of 25 minutes of work plus 5 minutes of rest is called a Pomodoro.
Every 4 pomodoros, that is, after 4 work sessions and breaks, you can take a longer break, of at least 10 minutes. So, you will have this rest time after about 2 hours working or studying. If you still have tasks to do on the day, or need to finish your work shift, start the process again.
How about seeing how the method works in a step-by-step fashion?
- The tip is to start with all the tasks of the day in hand – they can be written down in a notebook, or in a list
- Then, enter the estimated duration of the tasks, some will take exactly a Pomodoro, but others will be shorter or longer
- You can start working on the tasks you prefer. One suggestion is to move from the most urgent to the least
- Do the 25-minute cycles normally. At each pause, you can write down the tasks you have completed (or the percentage of work you have done).
- If you are studying, take the last 2 pomodoros of the day to do a review.
What are the advantages of the Pomodoro Method?
The first major advantage of the method is that it is adaptable. You can use it for studies and work, but also for homework, when doing a finishing job, to watch video lessons, and various other activities.
In addition, the 25-minute time is ideal for keeping your focus on one thing. Several studies show that human attention works best within 20 minutes. So you don’t get tired of the activity quickly – and, if applicable, you can always merge what you’re doing.
Finally, the Pomodoro Method is a study to better understand how we deal with time. By timing each task, you can see how long it actually takes to do something and what are your main distractions in everyday life.
Time management apps
Thankfully, the technology is there, so we don’t have to rely on kitchen alarms, like the one Francesco Cirillo used. Check out some tools that will help you apply this methodology:
Tomato Timer
Tomato Timer is a simple and free platform, with countdown options for pomodoros, short breaks and long breaks. You can leave it running on a tab and wait for the alarm to sound at the end of the count. The biggest advantage is that it is a website, so it is available anywhere with internet access.
Forest
Forest is an application for Android, iOS or browser that, in addition to controlling the time, blocks the use of your cell phone or specific websites that you configure. It is not exactly an application for the Pomodoro technique, but it has a 25-minute timer and has this added advantage of avoiding distractions. Options for Android and Google Chrome are free.
Noisli
Noisli is a tool for those who have difficulty concentrating. Available in both the website version and the free application, it allows you to set up background noise, to relax with your headphones while doing the Pomodoro method. To make it easier, it also comes with a built-in stopwatch.