Photo by Microsoft Edge on Unsplash

Focus is hard, I’m sorry.

Technology adoption is at an all-time high, and as a consequence, it’s becoming harder to concentrate on anything. We are constantly bombarded with loads of information in various forms of entertainment, news and gossip, job and career opportunities, life and relationship tips, and so on…

The average attention span for an adult is about 8.25 seconds and as such, the funniest of adverts and comedy videos have to be 30 seconds long (nice one TikTok, nice one), the most captivating tweets have to be in 280 characters or fewer, and the dankest of memes has to be in a maximum of 4 frames.

Anything above these and you just might lose interest because there’s a plethora of other bite-sized videos, tweets, WhatsApp statuses, memes, movies, news, etc. that are waiting in line for our ever-shrinking attention span.

In all these, it has become freakishly hard to focus on the more important things like reading a few pages from that non-fiction novel, completing a task on our to-do list, clearing our desk at work, turning in that homework, publishing this article😪, the list goes on…

You’re probably wondering “how then do I manage to focus 100% and get shit done when there’s so much to w̶a̶s̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶o̶n do?”.

Well, the Pomodoro technique might just be for you. It is a very simple technique that involves a tomato and just 25 minutes of your time. Yes, I said it, a tomato… but mind you, we won’t be making any stew.

The Pomodoro technique

The Pomodoro (Italian for tomato) technique is a popular productivity tool that helps to break down your work into 25-minute intense focus cycles followed by 5-minute breaks… sounds easy right? Well, it is.

It was invented by Francesco Cirillo, in the 1980s and due to its ease of use and effectiveness, it has gained widespread adoption and popularity.

Being a university student at the time, Cirillo was overwhelmed with assignments and deadlines he had to meet while preparing for a sociology exam and he was finding it hard to concentrate, so he promised himself to focus for just two minutes without distractions.

To achieve his goal, he went into the kitchen and grabbed a kitchen timer which happened to be shaped like a tomato, hence the Pomodoro name. He focused for the entire 2-minutes till the alarm went off. This birthed a new productivity method that is proven by many to be very efficient hence its popularity.

A pomodoro kitchen timer. Image courtesy of Forbes.com

How to Pomodoro

When you try to focus on something for too long, you get bored, fatigued, and ultimately lose interest. The technique eliminates this by making you focus for just 25 minutes followed by a 5-minute break and repeat until your task is accomplished.

Below are the easy steps for adopting the Pomodoro technique.

Image courtesy of Todoist

*** 1 Pomodoro cycle = 25 minutes ***

Step 1 — Pick a task

To get the best out of this technique, it helps to first outline the tasks you wish to accomplish and break gigantic tasks into smaller tasks for easy completion.

Step 2 — Set a 25-minute timer

Now for all the outlined tasks, assign specific Pomodoro cycles to them. For example, during a writing session for this article, I assigned 3 cycles to the task.

It means at the end of the session, I spent a total of 1 hour and 15 minutes being 100% focused.

Before this, while working, I would have probably replied to a text, viewed a few WhatsApp statuses, found myself dragging or being dragged on the slippery streets of Twitter, or being amazed by 13-year-olds that are building fortune 500 companies on LinkedIn and before you know it, all that time is gone without achieving much (can still happen by the way, that’s why I adopted the technique).

Step 3 — Work on your task until the time is up

For better time management and record keeping, always let the timer ring out to complete a cycle and you don’t have to stop it if you finished your task early, just use the remaining little time to review what you just accomplished.

Now, look at you… being all serious, smashing your life goals, ignoring the “Wyd?” texts from your crush and the 69 likes/comments notifications from the overly filtered picture you posted on Instagram… for 25 minutes straight, bravo!

Step 4 — Take a 5-minute break

Trust me, focusing for 25 minutes straight without a single distraction is god-level awesomeness and you should be very proud.

You can decide whatever you want to do with your 5 minutes but I’d recommend something fun, not related to the task at hand, and helps you relax a bit.

You might be tempted to skip the break since you’re now in “focus mode” but I’d highly recommend you follow the routine, that way you keep your brain fresh and relaxed all through your work.

Step 5 — After every 4 pomodoros, take a longer 15–30 minutes break

After 4 consecutive cycles, you would have put in 1 hour and 40 minutes of pure, undistracted focus. That is a whole lot and you deserve a longer break.

This is usually long enough for taking a walk, making a long call, reading a book, etc. in my case, it usually involves scrolling endlessly through Twitter or squeezing in an episode of Young Sheldon or The Boondocks but by all means, do you.

After the long break, repeat the whole process again from step 2 until you’ve finished your work.

Why 25 minutes?

25 minutes is short enough to not get bored or distracted and long enough to complete a whole task.

The timing is not set in stone so you can do what works best for you but I can assure you 25 minutes is perfect. Try it and let me know what you think.

Why you should adopt the technique

Its whole essence is to discourage procrastination and promote a healthy and simple approach to taking control of your time, distractions, and time management in general.

It tricks your mind to focus for just 25 minutes which is not a lot of time and promises to reward you with a break when that short time is completed. This way your brain stays fresh and relaxed.

It gives you a metric by which you measure your focus time. For example; if you want to work on submitting an assignment, you can easily assign time to work on it and at the end, you can say you focused on this task for a specific time.

Summary

In the short time that I’ve used this technique, it has greatly enhanced my productivity and has become an integral part of my daily activities. It’s refreshing for me to know that I can hardly get bored or lose focus while working on something.

If this doesn’t work for you, there are hundreds of other tools that would and will suit your needs all you need do is just a simple google search. Let me know when you find better ones as I’m always in search of ways to optimize my time and stay productive.

Thank you for reading and if this was helpful to you, please share with others as it might be helpful to them.

Now… my Pomodoro cycle has ended, let me head off to Twitter for the next 5 minutes.

Tschüss!