I know you want to be productive, actually a better word is effective. I say effective and NOT productive because you could productively do work that you shouldn’t have been doing in the first place. Effective is doing well the work that you should be doing.
Today I’m going to talk about GTD, Zeigarnik effect, open loops, notes on what you’re doing and Pomodoro.
2 responses to “GTD, Zeigarnick open loops and Pomodoro”
I’ve tried the Pomodoro technique before because I’ve seen it recommended by a bunch of people I follow.
I like the idea of measuring the amount of work you get done in a day in numbers of pomodoros.
My problem though is when I start getting into my work I find that timer very distracting and often I’m right in the middle of something which I have to finish before taking my break.
At that point the 5 minute break is over and a new pomodoro has started. If you do a lot of programming work then you should know exactly what this is like. You don’t want to stop right in the middle of a line of code.
Do you have any strategies for dealing with this?
I use a few tactics for this. First, maybe just take a quick note as a comment about what you were doing. Second, just work through the 5 minutes and through the next Pomodoro. Just don’t do that lots.
Really the 5 minute break isn’t for doing other things. The most I do is to wash out my coffee stuff. I’ve never really had a problem picking back up where I left off when I get back after 5 minutes.