Robert's Technology Journal

One of my new year’s resolutions this year was to increase my productivity at work. In my efforts to find a way to become more productive I stubbled across the Pomodoro Technique. Simply put the Pomodoro Technique is a series of twenty five minute time blocks of focused activity with short breaks in between each time block. Wanting to know more I picked up a copy of Staffan Nöteberg’s book Pomodoro Technique Illustrated.

The Pomodoro Technique in a Nutshell

The Pomodoro (Italian for “tomato”) Technique was created by Francesco Cirillo. In it simplest from it consist of a list containing activities, a daily to do list, and a kitchen timmer. At the beginning of each day an individual will select activities that need to be completed and add them to his/her to do list. Then they will select one activity form the the to do list and focus on it for twenty five minutes. After the time block is up a short three to five minute break is taken. This process continues until four pomodoros have been completed. At this point a longer break about thirty minutes is taken. The process continues for the rest of the day. Interruptions are handled by deferring them until the current pomodoro is finished or later in the day. The entire time a record is kept of how many pomodoros have been completed, how many interruptions occurred, and anything else that may be useful to the individual.

Pomodoro Technique Illustrated

Pomodoro Technique Illustrated by Staffan Nöteberg explains the Pomodoro Technique in detail as well as the author’s experience with the Pomodoro Technique. For this book the Pomodoro Technique could have been described in about thirty pages. Most of the content of this book is meaningless illustrations and information about how the brain works when using the Pomodoro Technique. While this information is interesting it can only be classified as filler for the book. I would have preferred the author outline the complete Pomodoro Technique in one chapter and then provide any additional information in subsequential chapters. Also I would have liked to see a chart that summarizes all of the symbols used by the author for recording the different metrics; this would have been helpful. Instead one must search the text to find the symbols used. I can’t recommend this book simply for the fact that most of the information about the Pomodoro Technique can be found online for free.