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flexagonSustainability of lifestyle has been a hot topic in my head this year -- not in a financial way or an eco way, but in a stress levels way. Minimalism has been wonderful and Zillian still feels like something I can't keep doing forever, so the search for more life-hackery goes on.
The Pomodoro Technique is a timer-based style of working that I've really been liking. It is sweetly simple -- it alternates 25-minute bursts of total focus with mandatory breaks. (The 25-minute burst is a pomodoro, which means tomato in Italian.) I first heard of this from this article, and tried it last weekend on my side project because what did I have to lose, 25 minutes? So far no luck using it at work; the interruptions are too legitimately high-priority and I can't use a timer that makes noise -- and thus, that I actually notice going off -- because of the open office plan. But at home I've used it for laundry, showers, and four pomodoros on my side project that accomplished something I've wanted to get working for a long time now. (I'm not doing everything the free e-book recommends; the pomodoros themselves are enough.)
I think much of the genius is in the enforced break at the end. With the timer ticking, not only is it easy not to feel overwhelmed (because 25 minutes isn't that bad), but you also want to do your thing efficiently because when it dings, you have to stop. When I used to set a timer to 15 minutes to get myself washing dishes, I didn't take an enforced break and I often would finish the task after the timer went off (because by then I would usually be into it). It was good, but didn't create as much built-in motivation to be efficient and quick. I think pomodoros very naturally lead me to find better and faster ways to work, and that is AWESOME, because in general I don't think I do that enough.
Thursday was a good day for thinking about this stuff, because I spent the whole day in a class called Managing Your Energy. It was aimed at enhancing productivity through attentiveness to physical, mental, and emotional energy; it also had a section on the alignment of your life with your values. As those who know me might guess, I'm doing pretty well on the physical energy, and emotionally I'm all right too. I'm even reasonably well aligned with what I think is important. But my mental energy is a wreck. I work (not always, but often enough) in an anxious and somewhat chat-distracted way, working long days on the latest short-term demand made of me and not stepping back to think of larger meaning. Not surprisingly, I feel anxious at work 95% of the time, and often enough that degenerates into "hopeless, plodding and overwhelmed". I bombed the mental part of the "how's your energy" quiz we started with.
(A big pomodoro thing is to stop working while you still feel you could keep going. This applies to pomodoros but I think I need to apply it to my days as well. I should not work as late as I can when I don't have a class to get to. Ideally, I should walk away leaving myself still excited to get going on something the next morning.)
They talked about ultradian rhythms, and the importance to physical energy of regular daytime rest. What, daytime rest? How countercultural. But no, really, apparently taking breaks is good. They recommend real breaks, of the "walk away from computer, eat some food, see the sunlight, think of other things" variety, every 90 to 120 minutes. This is not something I've ever tried before, and I'm intrigued. It certainly sounds better than the "scanning Facebook with 1/4 of my attention" partial-attention non-moving non-break that I more often fall into taking.
So I'm trying two things. The first is making a real attempt to have regularly timed, cheerful, sort of efficient mornings. It is no good that I often start my day with hopelessness (overslept again), anxiety and unpredictability, and I do know tricks that, put all together, will work for this. There's such a gap between knowing such things and feeling the effect of DOING them for a week or two, though! Argh! Be that as it may, yesterday I rolled out of bed and over to the elliptical machine for the first time in ages, and 20 easy minutes woke me right up. Today I kept the alarm set; getting up at the same time every day is going to be a part of this, maybe for a long time.
Daytime breaks are the other thing I'm going to do, and I'm still thinking about those. Ideas are appreciated. Thoughts are appreciated. And my timer just beeped... this post took me one pomodoro. :D I'm cheating just a little in order to go ahead and post it.
The Pomodoro Technique is a timer-based style of working that I've really been liking. It is sweetly simple -- it alternates 25-minute bursts of total focus with mandatory breaks. (The 25-minute burst is a pomodoro, which means tomato in Italian.) I first heard of this from this article, and tried it last weekend on my side project because what did I have to lose, 25 minutes? So far no luck using it at work; the interruptions are too legitimately high-priority and I can't use a timer that makes noise -- and thus, that I actually notice going off -- because of the open office plan. But at home I've used it for laundry, showers, and four pomodoros on my side project that accomplished something I've wanted to get working for a long time now. (I'm not doing everything the free e-book recommends; the pomodoros themselves are enough.)
I think much of the genius is in the enforced break at the end. With the timer ticking, not only is it easy not to feel overwhelmed (because 25 minutes isn't that bad), but you also want to do your thing efficiently because when it dings, you have to stop. When I used to set a timer to 15 minutes to get myself washing dishes, I didn't take an enforced break and I often would finish the task after the timer went off (because by then I would usually be into it). It was good, but didn't create as much built-in motivation to be efficient and quick. I think pomodoros very naturally lead me to find better and faster ways to work, and that is AWESOME, because in general I don't think I do that enough.
Thursday was a good day for thinking about this stuff, because I spent the whole day in a class called Managing Your Energy. It was aimed at enhancing productivity through attentiveness to physical, mental, and emotional energy; it also had a section on the alignment of your life with your values. As those who know me might guess, I'm doing pretty well on the physical energy, and emotionally I'm all right too. I'm even reasonably well aligned with what I think is important. But my mental energy is a wreck. I work (not always, but often enough) in an anxious and somewhat chat-distracted way, working long days on the latest short-term demand made of me and not stepping back to think of larger meaning. Not surprisingly, I feel anxious at work 95% of the time, and often enough that degenerates into "hopeless, plodding and overwhelmed". I bombed the mental part of the "how's your energy" quiz we started with.
(A big pomodoro thing is to stop working while you still feel you could keep going. This applies to pomodoros but I think I need to apply it to my days as well. I should not work as late as I can when I don't have a class to get to. Ideally, I should walk away leaving myself still excited to get going on something the next morning.)
They talked about ultradian rhythms, and the importance to physical energy of regular daytime rest. What, daytime rest? How countercultural. But no, really, apparently taking breaks is good. They recommend real breaks, of the "walk away from computer, eat some food, see the sunlight, think of other things" variety, every 90 to 120 minutes. This is not something I've ever tried before, and I'm intrigued. It certainly sounds better than the "scanning Facebook with 1/4 of my attention" partial-attention non-moving non-break that I more often fall into taking.
So I'm trying two things. The first is making a real attempt to have regularly timed, cheerful, sort of efficient mornings. It is no good that I often start my day with hopelessness (overslept again), anxiety and unpredictability, and I do know tricks that, put all together, will work for this. There's such a gap between knowing such things and feeling the effect of DOING them for a week or two, though! Argh! Be that as it may, yesterday I rolled out of bed and over to the elliptical machine for the first time in ages, and 20 easy minutes woke me right up. Today I kept the alarm set; getting up at the same time every day is going to be a part of this, maybe for a long time.
Daytime breaks are the other thing I'm going to do, and I'm still thinking about those. Ideas are appreciated. Thoughts are appreciated. And my timer just beeped... this post took me one pomodoro. :D I'm cheating just a little in order to go ahead and post it.
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 02:12 am (UTC)When you are working on tasks at a faster rate, do you think your quality of work is suffering?
no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 02:20 am (UTC)I think the real killers are partial attention (as opposed to focus) and context-switching. If someone is 100% focused then they'll probably be going at an appropriate speed.
Rushing to make an artificial timer-based deadline could be more of a problem, but at that point a person is only paying partial attention because they're also watching the timer count down. Hmmm.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 03:05 am (UTC)i'd like to get up at the same time every day. i just always have excuses every time i think about starting to establish it, ways in which the particular upcoming week is special and won't allow for that.
what kind of daytime-break ideas are you looking for? like, what to do during them? how long or often they should be?
no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 10:51 pm (UTC)Nope, alas... I've got linux and mac. Thanks though!
what kind of daytime-break ideas are you looking for? like, what to do during them? how long or often they should be?
All those things. A 15 or 20 minute break every 2 hours is agreed on by both the class I took and the wisdom of the tomato, so I might try to start with that. One thing I could do is eat lunch not-at-my-desk. Also, I've taken my yoga lift to the fitness room at work, so that I can put it on stacked-up blocks and practice presses onto it with increasing levels of difficulty.
But, I'm not sure. I have vague ideas about the shorter breaks, and/or maybe trying to do something different each of the five work-days so that things stay special. I'm sure it's way more important to start doing something than to get it perfect right away.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 11:05 pm (UTC)for the shorter breaks, i find that when i'm not motivated, i go beyond five minutes -- i get up and do some dishes, make some tea or coffee, get carried away in web surfing. when i'm super motivated, i don't even want to take the breaks -- i check my email, find nothing there, and am ready to get started. i try to always at least stand up out of my chair. stretch my arms up over my head, roll my neck around, that sort of thing. handstands are always an option.
for the longer breaks -- well, i've been doing this at home, so i use them for a meal or snack or cleaning up or taking a walk or calling a friend or writing personal email.
i'd say more but i've got :34 of my break left :)
no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 06:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 08:34 pm (UTC)As for me, I don't always have a positive experience in the cafeteria anyway. Historically I've always loathed cafeterias. They scared me. In fact, after the first week or so of freshman year I spent all of high school eating in classrooms, bathrooms, hallways or outside to avoid them. The one at work doesn't seem to have so many hazards, but still, my eating-at-desk isn't as bad as it sounds because at least it's not the cafeteria either. :)
I am now considering that there are other places: the rooftop garden, the fitness room, etc.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 12:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 08:35 pm (UTC)