The Pomodoro Technique

[justbeast]

To shellefly, who asked about the Pomodoro Technique in the comments:

Yep, I used it with an actual pomodoro kitchen timer (which is cute and only $4.99 on amazon! Though the one I bought, Cat liked and immediately yoinked), as well as the online Pomodoro Helper timer

Comments

[eshgrey]

I do this with dishes and vacuuming...

Im lazy though and do what I call a 15 minute clean...

[justbeast]

Hey, makes sense! (I gotta start doing that with dishes, too...)

[alchymyst]

Sounds like something I need to use. :) I know that I personally have pretty strong anxiety about time. I always feel like there's not enough of it.

I skimmed the paper and while I was doing it, two things were running through my head: 1) applying this to language learning (no surprise there, since learning languages is something of an obsession with me): doing it in chunks like this might help avoid the language learning burnout a lot of people get and will make it less overwhelming; and 2) whether meditation would help with applying the technique, since meditation involves a lot of practicing of how to maintain your focus and how to deal with internal interruptions (I am talking about the most common, 'concentrate on your breath' type of meditation).

[justbeast]

I was thinking something similar about meditation, too!

(What language(s) are you learning?)

[alchymyst]

My current projects are Japanese, Spanish, and Irish. My French is halfway decent, but I lost most of my ability to converse in it. Can still read pretty well, though. I like learning Latin as well. It's oddly relaxing, maybe because it's so... succinct, if you will. I would like to learn Sanskrit and Farsi at some point...

[justbeast]

Wwow, that's really cool.

How is learning Irish? Is it really hard? And what does it buy you? Are there interesting works that you can then read in the original?

(Also, can one speak Sanskrit, or is it just written?)

[garote]

My solution for this is to listen to a podcast that is about as long as the chore takes.
For more intellectually demanding stuff, I have to admit, I never have a problem just sitting down and doing it. No timer required. But that's because I strongly favor a policy of designing my life such that I only need to do things that do not bore me. Between the intellectual challenge of work, and the podcast-augmented doldrums of paying bills, doing dishes, etc., that pretty well sorts it out.
Life is too short to front-load it with stuff I don't want to do.

[justbeast]

Ok, that is fascinating.

I'm.. not there yet :) I still have to force my mind to sit down and do intimidating (or boring) coding tasks. Even if it's a project I absolutely love and dream about.

[firebirdgrrl]

Oooh, thanks for sharing. I think this could be really helpful for me. (1)

Off topic, that timer is super adorable.

(1) ie, at work, doing something and then spending 15 minutes what the office building would look after there were no people on earth and hey, some might have made it after all and there would be kudzu everywhere so maybe their ancestors would figure out how to make kudzu fuel and all of a sudden, work is not done.

[warriorofworry]

I love the tomato, at least the downloadable one. It DOES help keep me (original ms. let me get distracted) on task.