Leaning on The Pomodoro Lately

It's funny how accidentally we discover things sometimes... a lot of the time. I think it would be interesting to have a catalog of things I've discovered on purpose, and things that I've discovered by total accident. I suppose that's simultaneously one of the best things about the very nature of the web (accidental discovery) and one of the the worst things (my quest for "accidental discovery" can be a complete timesink). 

I remember sitting in my cubical at my first programming job at TRX in Atlanta, GA, scouring the web for an answer to something (probably how to formulate some regex to scrape data off of a passenger name record), when I stumbled on an article about something called the Pomodoro Technique of all things. I remember reading the article and thinking to myself, "What a novel idea... sounds interesting... I think I'll give it a try sometime." In it's most basic form the Pomodoro Technique is a method for managing your time developed by Francesco Cirillo (when he was a college student) where you:

1. Pick something that must be done.
2. Set a timer for 25 minutes.
3. Work on the task.
4. End work when the timer rings.
5. Take a 5 minute break.
6. Repeat 2-5 until your task is complete.

I think at the time, I toyed around with working on a few things using Pomodoros... but the technique didn't immediatly stick for me. I don't think I was serious enough about it, even if I had seen some benefit out of using it for a few things. 

Flash forward several years... I'm at a new job with a great group of developers that I learned a lot from at VersionOne. They had a deeply-seated tradition of pair programming, which was new to me at the time. One of the things that we all loved to experience when pairing was a sense of getting through the things we needed to get done with a sense of flow in getting through them. To that end, a couple devs liked working via a Pomodoro Timer. 

Kept with us during the 25 minutes was a sheet of paper to record anything that was important to come back to and take care of, but not germane to the task we had at hand. These two practices I have kept with me and have used on and off ever since I learned them. Sometimes I have been more disciplined about the timer, and other times not as much. I have always... always... kept the habit of a small piece of paper to record things on to come back to. As humans, we're not built to keep track of more than about 4 things at any given time. The little piece of paper is the external brain that frees me to be more creative. More on that in another blog post.

Flash forward a few more years and here we all find ourselves wrapped up in the hands of a COVID-19 based pandemic, and for those of us fortunate enough... working from home full time. Many of us also found ourselves as poor substitutes for the amazing teachers that our kids had in school. Here we were, overnight seemingly, tossed into a world where we were expected to be as productive as we had ever been at work... and also be immediately available for our kids when they needed help for something related to school... or any other creative thing that came to their minds. 

Time management and retaining a sense of flow in my work life became an immediate challenge. My kids needed help understanding some of their assignments, and I was their substitute teacher. My employer required me to be continually making progress on all things work related. How was I going to get through this without making my kids feel guilty for asking for help? How was I going to claim the time required to make meaningful progress at work? Hellooooo to tha Pomodoro!!

I've rediscovered my disciplined relationship with the Pomodoro Technique. There were several days where at the end of the day I was asking myself why had I not completed anything. It was in part the nature of the work that I was working on, and in part needing to be the awesome dad/substitute teacher my kids needed me to be. I've been using the Pomodoro Technique as I always have, really no different other than I don't really pair at my current employer. I'm just using it much more regularly lately than I had been over the past year or so. It's helped me with letting my kids know when they can snag me to ask questions they have needed help with. And it's helped me with staying focused and on task to get through the day to day coding work that I do. The family get's me for little windows of time, and I get a state of flow through my day. It's honestly been a godsend.

All of that having been said, my hope is to start utilizing some of the aspects of the technique that I haven't been using. If I'm successful in pulling them in, I'll check back here and share how it has affected my work. If you've not ever tried the technique, I encourage you to give it a shot. I think you'll be surprised at how helpful and useful it can be.