A Pomodoro a Day...or Four!

It can be tough, however, to stick to those times in the same way that your schedule, and your physical presence on campus, led you to follow your study routines before confinement. Unless you have an innate sense of time and project management, it’s easy to fall behind on your larger projects or to get distracted from your work because you didn’t identify goals that were clear and realistic. This is easier to fix than you might think if you equip yourself with a few mental tools and techniques.

Workout routines for your brain

Just as your body will thank you for keeping up healthy physical routines right now, like regular exercise, meals and sleep, your mind will thank you for building back into your life some mental routines for focusing on your work. You can do that using time management techniques, like Pomodoro, that break up your work into short, structured sprints.

The basic idea of the Pomodoro technique is that you identify a goal, set a timer to work on that goal for 25 minutes, take a short break, and repeat three more times before taking a longer break. You force yourself to focus, but you also make sure you take regular breaks. (The technique is named after the tomato-shaped ‘Pomodoro’ kitchen timer the technique’s inventor had, but here’s a virtual Pomodoro timer you can use.)

One variation on Pomodoro that I’ve been using in my own work is called Work Cycles. It involves a little more reflection and self-evaluation, but the template worksheet linked there will guide you through it. The main idea is that you identify a goal (“What do I want to get done by the end of this series of sprints”), and then you:

●      Commit time to work on a project/assignment/problem for specific periods (e.g. four 25-minute work cycles, with 5-minute breaks, starting at 10:00 am)

●      Clarify your intermediate goal: what’s the next thing you need to get done in order to make progress on your work toward your broader goal

●      Set a time limit for your intermediate goal: use this time to work on that goal without conversation, interaction or distraction

●      Break and review: reflect on the work you just did and recognize when you’ve made progress. If you struggled, you can also identify what kept you from making progress. Then, make sure you take a short break! Stretch! Refill your coffee!

●      Repeat

Over time, these techniques will help you learn to break down larger projects into smaller goals that can be achieved in a time frame for which you know you can maintain focus. You can then improve upon this through iterative self-evaluation.

Virtual study sprints: social accountability is your friend

These are already great techniques for setting up the structure and focus to get work done. But there’s another way to ensure you don’t get distracted from your Pomodoro/Work Cycle: doing it with others, but independently, as study sprints. We’re all in confinement, so these will have to be virtual study sprints*, but it’s easy enough to do using Teams meetings or any videoconferencing platform. Here are some ways to do study sprints with others:

The minimal version is to set up an uninterrupted timeframe during which each person commits to being present and working on their own work. For example, schedule a one or two-hour videoconference where you can all come together online and work in each other’s presence. Leave the audio off for most or all of the session, but leave your video or avatar on to attest to the fact that you’re there, connected and working. It’s similar to how you might come to the Library where everyone is quiet and focused on their studies.

A more structured version makes use of time management techniques and breaks up your study session into shorter sprints. At the start of the session, everyone defines their own goals for the next two hours, and just before each sprint, everyone takes a minute to summarize their intermediate goal for that sprint. They can share their goal via chat or write it down, but sharing your goals contributes to the feeling of presence and focus.

Why go to the trouble to do any of this?

●      It takes minimal setup -- just agreeing to a schedule and a few ground rules.

●      Reflecting on your goals before and after sprints helps you manage distractions and challenges, and can help you work more effectively over time.

●      Having peers working next to you, even if it’s virtual, can feel supportive and energizing, even without direct interaction.

●      Working independently but in front of others puts gentle pressure on you to identify realistic goals, and stay focused to make concrete progress on them. Ultraworking (who build services supporting the use of Work Cycles) calls this “social accountability”.

Organizing Virtual Study Sprints

If you’d be interested in attending a study sprint, or if you’d like to organize a Virtual Study Sprint yourself (and get more information about how to do this), fill out this form and we’ll get back to you.

* Thanks to Rebecca Campbell (Professor, Educational Psychology, Northern Arizona University), whose “Virtual Homework Sprints” inspired this.