David Allen’s Getting Things Done is a classic system (shorthand: GTD) for piling up all the things you have to fill your day with and sorting them out in a way that might actually get what needs to get done, done. I like many things about the GTD model. Specifically:
- Brain dumping all tasks into a pile
(without trying to sort or process them) - Filtering tasks quickly by (basically) whether it’s your problem or not, and if it is, how much of a problem is it.
( do it, delegate it, defer it, or drop it ) - Perpetual reassessment based on changing situations
- Accept what isn’t getting done
There are some holes in the GTD method though. GTD is great at shuffling all your stuff into a way that you know what is out there to do, but it does remarkably little to control what happens when you’re actually DOING.
For me, that’s where the Pomodoro Technique picks up.
The Pomodoro Technique was created by an italian guy named Francesco Cirillo, which to me, sounds like a prime name for a monk. Just saying. He also did it in the 80s, so that’s pretty amazing in itself. While everyone in America was buying shoulder pads and cocaine, Brother Cirillo was on task, somewhere in Rome. Go figure.
The basic premise is recorded time blocking with forced breaks at regular intervals. Each work-break block equals a “pomodoro”. Apparently his timer is shaped like a tomato. Whatever. The whimsy must be lost in translation, but I’m not about to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
By recording how many “pomodoros” a given task requires, it gives you a mental awareness of long individual tasks will take. There’s also a series of worksheets and other accoutrements, but I don’t bother with any of those (I use software that does all that tracking part **see below).
If you bill hourly for certain services (like website updates or graphic design) this is an ideal way to guesstimate quotes for things your clients request. After you do it for a couple days, you start thinking of your tasklist in terms of how many pomodoros a particular task will require. If it’s less than one pomodoro, it’s one of those GTD items you can just do real quick, if not, it gets scheduled and estimated.
“Do keyword analysis for SallysSlipperyUndergarmentShoppe.com : 2PD”
The Pomodoro Technique comes in several languages and is totally free.
You can download the PDF in english here: Pomodoro Technique PDF
There’s also a great (aforementioned) open source timer/tracker that sits up in your apple menu and tracks where your mortal hours disappear to, as they are finite and perpetually count down to your eventual and unavoidable death.
You can download it for free here: Pomodoro Technique for Mac
No comments yet.