Doing pomodoros is changing my life

For people who don't know what pomodoros are, they're basically alternating periods of work + break (usually 25 min working / 5 min break), and there are a bunch of desktop and mobile pomodoro apps that you can get. I've known about pomodoros for a pretty long time but only started doing them after learning more about them when I took the Learning How to Learn online course while I was at RC. Even then, I never fully incorporated them into my work until this past month.

I feel like doing pomodoros has changed my life in a big time way, by making me more aware of both the passage of time and my own mental state. For instance, now I can set daily goals for myself like "work on cos pset for 3 pomodoros," which allows me not only to break down big (and undesirable) tasks into manageable daily chunks, but also to become more aware of how long it takes me to do certain parts. Not only that, but I'm now also more aware of how many things I can actually do during the 5 minute breaks (like go to the bathroom, make tea, fold a few shirts, dance to a song, etc.), which feels pretty good. Also, doing pomodoros feels like a more sustainable way for me to work, because now I know that when I can't get through a whole pomodoro, I'm mentally tired and should either take a long break or stop working for the day.

It's not a perfect system, and writing this post actually makes me feel bad that I'm at a place in my life where I have to think about how to be super productive, but pomodoros have definitely helped with that! And doing pomodoros with friends is even better.

Comments

  1. Fall semester (so far) in review – Julia's BlogOctober 31, 2018 at 4:12 PM

    […] my classes…they’re definitely a lot of work as a whole, which I kind of touched on in my last post. I’ll just go through them one by […]

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  2. Best small-ish habits that I’ve adopted – Julia's BlogJanuary 20, 2019 at 5:06 AM

    […] allow me to easily plan and set goals for how much work I want/need to get done. I already wrote a blog post about pomodoros that goes more in depth, but I want to add here that getting up/away from your work station during […]

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