I’m always looking for ways to improve my productivity; the more I get done at work, the less work I have to wrestle with to stop from creeping into my family life.
I’ve been using the Pomodoro Technique for a few weeks now, and I’m pretty happy with the results. the Pomodoro Technique promotes working to a specific unit of time (25 minutes) with a 5 minute break in between sessions. During a session you’re supposed to avoid all interruptions to try and achieve a list of tasks (one task per session).
Two important things I learnt almost immediately are:
- make sure you break down your tasks into steps that are achievable within 30 – 40 minutes; you’ll be surprised how much extra work you can complete with 25 minute bursts of pure focus
- take the scheduled breaks (and when you do, get away from the computer and walk around, refresh your body, eyes and your mind), if you don’t you’ll be super tired at the end of the day
A positive side affect I’ve noticed is that your team can usually resolve any issues they have during the 25 minutes without your intervention (but that’s a blog post for another day).
I’ve started a side project with Gavin Keech, our creative director at Enpresiv to create a pomodoro timer, helping to implement the Pomodoro Technique called Focus Booster. We’ve had almost 1000 downloads since its launch (a couple of weeks ago) and we’ve had two official releases.
We built it using Flex 3, Air 1.5, the Mate FrameworkM, Degrafa, AS3CoreLib and BendPixels (for integration Pixel Bender filters) libraries. I’m going to write a series of blog posts on some of my learning’s along the way.
Filed under: general
And nobody at your company saw any problem that just to do a freaking timer you have employed a huge stack of software including two frameworks (and the one that comes with Flex)?????? To keep focus in a better way, start to eliminate the things you don’t need and don’t be driven by tools.
@Andrew Sagassi Woah, you’re a bit agro. I generally employ frameworks because it helps you perform something faster and each of those frameworks did. Focus Booster was completely a side-project (nothing to do with my company) and as such, I used it as an opportunity to try new things and achieve tasks in a different way than we do them at work. I’m really glad I experimented because we’re probably going to start using MATE at work, rather than sticking to Cairngorm. As for your advice on how to focus, presently I’m practising the Pomodoro Technique, and you need a timer for that; so thanks for your advice, but I’ll leave it.
I am interested in how Mate helped.
Also interested in how you used AS3CoreLib
@bgoosman We use Cairngorm at work in all of or Flex applications, and I had started to hear quite a bit at how great Mate was so I thought I’d try it out. I’m stoked that I did because it is a really great framework and I think we’ll start to using it more and more. I’m going to do a couple of posts about it soon.