Tired of Procrastination and unwanted distraction pulling you away from doing your work then, Eat that Frog with a Pomodoro…

M Khalid Ali
3 min readAug 21, 2020

--

I was a person who had an immense trouble in doing his work productively because, I couldn’t start my work in the first place due to my best friend “Procrastination”, and even if I started something by crossing swords with my friend, I couldn’t focus on my work due to another persuasive friend “unwanted distractions”.

Source; LIFE@IMI-Wordpress.com

This continued to haunt me and I was falling behind in studies until I figured out a way to separate my paths with the friends who deceived me all along. The thing that I actually did was that whenever I had to do some work, I would find a quite place without any distractions away from my friends and turn off every possible way they could contact me i.e, put my mobile on silent, closed my mind to unwanted imagination and tried to focus for some time.

At first, I could do it for 18 minutes and after that I gave myself some time to go out like to have tea for instance. This gave me an opportunity to improve myself and I saw some progress with the time as well and with commitment and consistency, it eventually became a habit.

I never knew that this technique had a name until I joined Amal Academy. This technique is called A Pomodoro. Yes, Pomodoro guys or also Tomato in English. It was developed by Professor Francesco Cirillo in 1980, when she was a university student.

Source; toolshero.com

What is Pomodoro Technique?

This technique helps us to work with time, and take control of ourselves in a very effective way. It is a miraculous time management system and very easy to apply. It improves productivity in a decent manner. In this technique, a person has to choose a work to perform and set the timer for 25 mins and continue to do work until the time completes and after that takes a little break of 5–8 mins to relax and again repeats the procedure 3 more times, and when he completes 4 rounds then he takes a longer break of 20–30 mins.

“What gets measured, gets managed.” Peter Drucker

It was our task to perform this technique for ourselves and then deduct results and see was it helpful or not. I also performed this technique to complete my Project work.

I started my online course 2 and with full focus completed a good amount of course in less time and didn’t feel any difficulty in doing so, and then after 25 mins I watched Caribbean Premier League Match 1 highlights for 6 mins (I just love cricket and wasn’t able to watch it before due to preparation of project proposal) and again came back started where i left and completed round two with ease as well and again for relaxation played a game on mobile (Critical Ops) for 8 mins.

It was getting late at night and i had to sleep so, I called it a day. Next morning, I suffered from sore throat and fever and couldn’t do anything as i wasn’t having energy to do anything, nor I was productive.

So, after recovering two days later on Thursday, I started again from start going from round 1 to round 4 and watching match highlights (as two days meant two highlights to watch) and taking tea (as I had no appetite to eat anything) in between rounds I completed Pomodoro technique. It was definitely a useful and productive technique as I completed a lengthy course in a short time and in a productive manner.

Later, I also used this technique for Resume writing and again found it helpful though it had some extra relaxation time this time but All is well that ends well…!

I will surely use this technique again and will try to stick to the original time period defined in the start and not let myself get carried away while relaxing. As, Francesco Cirillo Said

“One day we will be more creative, more productive and yet more relaxed.”

--

--

M Khalid Ali
M Khalid Ali

Written by M Khalid Ali

A Traveler, an Adventurer, a Believer and a Mechanical Engineer.