Pomodoro technique!

Are you a procrastinator and there’s nothing you can do about it? Well, Pomodoro technique worked for me and i am pretty sure it would help you get rid of your not-so-wanted procrastination.

I came across the Pomodoro technique through my fellowship course and i am bound to believe that this could actually change my life for better. I work as a teacher’s assistant and my job requires making exam papers and also checking them. I approximately receive 500–600 copies to be checked every month. Since this is a very tedious task along with my university commitments, i often procrastinate it and end up having a huge chunk of copies left a day before the submission. Since this problem required immediate solution, I experimented this technique on my work. I took out one pile that had 63 copies. I checked one copy and timed myself. I figured out that it took me 10 minutes to do so. Hence, 63 copies should take 10 hours approx. I divided these 10 hours into 2 days and followed this Pomodoro’s technique.

Steps:

• I set an alarm for 25 minutes.
• I continued checking those copies until the timer rang.
• I felt the urge for using my cellphone between the timer so i wrote it down and went back to check.
• After the timer rang, i gave myself a star on a piece of paper. After which i took a 5 minute break.
• I then repeated this until i had 4 stars, After which i gave myself a chocolate as a treat.
• I was then successfully able to complete my checking in 11 hours in total (Considering i had breaks in between).

This experiment was somewhat difficult for me. It was not very difficult because the excitement to try this out had highly reduced my ability to think about the negativities. The little difficulty that i faced was due to couple of reasons:

a) I live in a joint-family, and the constant commotion around reduces my ability to focus on my tasks.

b) My semester projects are due in a week and i have to cater to my group members and my individual responsibilities which was constantly at the back of my mind.

Apart from the difficulty that comes with every new thing you try, this exercise was highly helpful for me because i was able to complete the task i had to, in the set time, which i am sure i would not have completed if it was not for this technique. Considering the impressive results i definitely plan on continuing this technique and implementing it to complete the little tasks in my daily life. This activity would surely help me perform better, meet my deadlines, manage my time effectively and to eventually get rid of procrastination. However to improve and make this experience even more better, I would use my cellphone’s feature to lock apps for a designated time period and lock my social media apps so that even if i felt the urge to use it, i would be unable to do so in between my tasks. This could also be improved by categorizing my tasks in order of their priority and then working on those that are to be completed urgently. As a whole it was an amazing experience!