I hear, once in a while, this “great life hack” called the Pomodoro Technique. The basic principle is, one works in small, focused bursts on a task.
There’s a major problem, though. It doesn’t work for me. It might take me the entire “focused burst” time to really get focused on the task at hand, and then, boom! A forced distraction takes me away, just as I get warmed up. Getting back into the next cycle then takes at least as long, or longer, and pretty soon there’s zero forward progress as my attention is sliced to ribbons by a timer.
(I observe the same problem with the average ‘typing break’ software that doesn’t bother monitoring actual typing. I am too frequently just getting warmed up when a “scheduled break” arrives.)
tl;dr: the “pomodoro technique” is not a magic cure-all, and you don’t have to feel bad if it doesn’t work for you. You can just stop using it.
PHP & Perl Web Development, and the Craft of Programming
