Habit of the Week: the Pomodoro technique

Pomawhat? 

Pomodoro! I'd like to share one of my favourite tips with you all, that resonates with the "Little and Often" post from last week. This method is by far the best and easiest way to get your butt in gear and get your important tasks done, without feeling stressed, overwhelmed or exhausted.

Source: zirtual.com

The Method
It's such an easy method that I can guarantee you won't forget it:

Set a timer for 25 minutes. Work on your task for the whole 25 minutes with no distractions. Once the timer goes off, reward yourself with a 5 minute break. This is a 'pomodoro'. Repeat this cycle of 25/5 three or four times then have a longer break of 20 minutes before returning to the 25/5 cycle.

The beauty of this is that you can alter the increments to suit your needs, such as ADHD, depression, physical impairments, and so on. I've used a couple of variations over time: 20/10, 15/15, 30/30, 45/15. It's up to you to pick what timings will suit your needs. 

But don't slack off! Don't be silly and do 5 minutes of work with 55 minutes of rest. That's just cheating the system and to be honest won't really show you any progress. Try and aim for as much work as possible without overtiring yourself. 

And remember, no distractions! Put your phone away, turn off the TV, get off YouTube and Facebook, and just focus on your task. It's okay to leave your emails unattended for 25 minutes, you can check them in your break!

How it works

All it does is force you to break up your task into smaller pieces that are more manageable. It forces you to question the task and ask yourself "right, what bit can I get done in the next 25 minutes?". It aims at making you focus and get large tasks done bit by bit. 

Take, for example, a 2,000 word essay, a 10 page report, or a household to clean. In one pomodoro you could, read a chapter relevant to your subject; focus on getting 500 words of your report done; tackle the dishes and put them away. Don't think about everything else that needs doing once you're done, just focus on getting this one section of 25 minutes completed. Take your break, and then consider what your next move is.

Over time, you will learn from experience for how long it takes you to get certain tasks done. It may take you 5 pomodoros to get the house clean. With this knowledge, you can plan your days better, knowing when you have enough time to get everything done, and how much work you can realistically get done in a day. You will develop self-discipline along the way and eventually find that tasks are easier and more manageable to complete.

Source: preparedpantry.com

Go try it out!

Here's an android app that's free to use, called Pomodroido.
A free app for the iPhone, the Simple Pomodoro Timer
And a free web app / desktop application: http://www.focusboosterapp.com/

Let me know in the comments if you have found any handy tools that you use in conjunction with the pomodoro technique.

~ It's never too late in the day to start your day over ~

Habit of the Week: Nice Shiny Patches; Little and Often

Think about all the things that you need to get done right now. Think of all of it. Your work, your school, your housework, your projects, your bills. Scary, right?

Is this what's in your head right now?
Source: pocketchanged.com

Now, stop thinking about it all. Sounds like a stupid thing to say, when I've just told you to think about it, but first things first: Make lists. Go away, write down all those scary things onto lists (multiple lists separated by type would be a plus!), then come back with a clear mind. Done it? No? You should! I did. 

Lists are one of the greatest tools you can use when feeling overwhelmed by having lots to do. They allow you to put things down, pen on paper, fingers on keys, and not worry about forgetting anything important as it's all written down. You can allow those nagging thoughts to leave your mind, and come back to them when you're ready. Back to my point.

Don't do all of it: just get started

This applies to any large and taunting task, really. The perfectionist inside you is probably making the task out to be a Big Scary Thing because you worry you won't do it perfectly. And everybody knows, if you don't do any of it, you can't fail being perfect as you never tried! Hurray...?

Ignore that voice, and just do a little bit. I'll give you some examples.

I was in the bathroom the other day, brushing my teeth. I was idly looking around, as I do when I'm standing there with a mouth full of toothpaste, and noticed that the sink was a bit grubby. I don't know about you, but in my home this soapy watery gloop puddles up on the sink near the soap dispenser. Yuck. Most days I put my blinkers on and don't notice it. Not that day. As soon as I was finished brushing my teeth, I decided I'd wipe it. Just that little bit. I wanted to get rid of the gloopy stuff, and nothing else. So I did. I wiped it all up (with toilet paper or something, I forget) and felt better that I'd made a tiny patch better. Nice Shiny Patch. I then grabbed the bristly brush from under the sink and decides to scrub the rest of the sink area, just because I wanted the Nice Shiny Patch to be a bit bigger, and encompass the whole sink. A few minutes later, the whole sink was a Nice Shiny Patch, and I felt accomplished.

...I then made the fatal mistake of looking around at the rest of the bathroom, and noticing more mess. I felt disheartened that my Nice Shiny Patch was so tiny and insignificant compared to the rest of the bathroom. The thought of doing the same to the whole bathroom was pretty daunting. So that's when I learnt my next point:

Do a Little at a time...

When feeling in a good mood, I like to spontaneously buy cleaning supplies. I don't necessarily know how to use them, or where to use them, but I feel that if I own cleaning supplies, I can feel better about my messy home. On a recent trip, one of those cleaning supplies happened to be a grout cleaning brush. It cost £1 from a local Staples store. It has a long handle about 8" long, and hard bristled on the end. But the bristles on this brush are in a thin, long line. A bit different to regular scrubbing brushes you find. That was why this one is designed to clean grout.

A grout brush, quite similar to the one I own
Source: nationwidejanitorialsupply.com

Cleaning grouting between tiles was something I never really considered doing. As a young person who recently left the family home, this is all new to me. But I put my new brush in the bathroom, hoping it would do the cleaning itself. It didn't.

Once again, I found myself brushing my teeth, looking around. This time I spotted the tiles. I had the sudden urge to clean the tiles. Not all of them, but one particular patch under the shower unit that was getting a bit grimy from the moisture. So I attacked it and cleaned around about 9 tiles. I made a Nice Shiny Patch!

This time, while admiring my Nice Shiny Patch, I ignored the fact that my whole bathroom is tiled floor to ceiling. I didn't care, I had made a good start. I vowed to myself I would do a Little At A Time.

Left: after; Right: before.

I thought I'd add a picture to show what I'm on about. It's sort of hard to tell in these pictures, but there's definitely a orangey tinge to the grout in the right picture, that I eliminated in the left. These pictures don't do it justice just how gross it originally was. But I made a Nice Shiny Patch!

...but do it Often.

Of course, it's all well and good making a Nice Shiny Patch, but it's not very handy when it gets all dirty again, or when the patch stays little. The aim is to make your Nice Shiny Patch bigger by cleaning around it, and then joining up Shiny Patches together to make a Nice Shiny Room!

So now, every time I brush my teeth, I wipe the sink, and make the Shiny Patch a bit bigger. Every time I have a shower, I take a minute to make a Shiny Patch on the tiles with my new grout brush. Soon the whole shower area will be a Nice Shiny Shower! I've even got a grout brush to use in the kitchen on the tiled counter-tops to clean the grout there, as I want a Nice Shiny Counter-top too!

I just love to walk into a room and see my little bits of effort, and my little bits of progress against daunting tasks. The key to Little and Often is that it consists of two parts: do a Little at a time, but make sure that you do it Often enough that it counts. By incorporating this habit into your life, you can make it a little bit easier for yourself to tackle daunting tasks and make a manageable household.

To Summarise

Little and Often, and focus on making Nice Shiny Patches. Have your supplies ready to tackle the little spots regularly. There's no shame in only doing a little bit. You're aiming to improve your home and if the best method is to do it bit by bit, and not all in one go, then by all means, go forth with your Nice Shiny Patches and make them gradually multiply so you have Nice Shiny Rooms and Nice Shiny Homes!

Eat That Frog! How to get organised

Hey guys, I'm posting about being organised today - another big part of my life! Recently I bought a book called 'Eat That Frog', and the idea behind the title is this: all your tasks that you have to do are 'frogs', and a phrase that's mentioned in this book is: "if you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first". Basically, this means, if you have more than one important task that you must get done, do the hardest, most difficult one first. Then, when it comes to the next task, the worst is over and you can feel good about your accomplishment. Great, right?

I won't give too much away about this book, because I'm sure I'll get into trouble about giving away ideas from a book you have to pay for. What I will say, is that certain things inspired me to create a way of getting organised: making specific lists!

I printed out some of these free printables from Organised Home and used them to make my lists. What I have done is make four lists: my Master list, my Monthly list, my Weekly list, and my Daily list. I used the lined blank pages for these lists. You can just use scrap paper if you like, but I already had these printed out, so I thought I'd use them.

I start off by writing everything done on the Master and Monthly lists. This is things like "sort out what career I want to do after uni", "sort out my dissertation topic" (I'm a uni student). On my Monthly list I have things like my exam dates, and the essay deadlines, as well as any things that I can think of that need to be done in that month. (I don't include things such as bills to pay, as that is ongoing and repeated every month, so I have a separate calendar printable for that). I then turn to the Weekly list, and add some things from the Master and Monthly - so, you get a bit of an overlap on the lists of certain tasks - which are tasks such as any appointments I have that week, or that I need to pick up my new glasses. Finally I created a Daily list, the day before it is needed by - so, on Tuesday I write my list for Wednesday, and so on. The Daily list has all the trivial things on it, such as "do the laundry", "post X's birthday card" and so on. 

Here's a photo of my papers. I purposefully took the photo from far away so you can't be nosey and read what I've written on my lists!

These lists really help, and as you can see, my daily one is pretty crossed-out! One other thing: don't ever feel bad if there are things on your list at the end of the day. You can always write it on your next Daily list. And don't forget, you can always add things on during the day, you don't have to panic and think that you have to remember everything you need to do tomorrow when writing your Daily list.

So now, if you incorporate these lists with what I learnt from one of the chapters in the book - eat that frog! Look at your Daily list, and see which task is the biggest, meanest, most horrible task, and do it! Obviously, if you have time contraints, like you have to call your bank before it shuts, do so, but in general, do the hardest task first. For me, that's usually my uni work. I will take doing housework over uni reading any day! So, applying this rule, I sat down and wrote an essay plan and got it finished. I felt really good about it, and then carried on my evening by doing all my other tasks. Usually, I do every other task possible before I get to my least favourite, with the thought that "but I've been doing a lot of things today, I can do that one later" - but then later gets too late, and I have to transfer that task over to the next day, where the same thing repeats. That way, I end up leaving an important task until really late, and then rushing it, stressing, and not have it done properly. If I do things this way, my essays will be done on time relatively stress-free.

This method can be applied to any person: whether you're a businessperson and you have a lot of important paperwork and deadlines, whether you're a housewife and have lots of housework, appointments, and children to deal with, or whether you're a student like me, and you have essays and reading to do. This method works really well for me, and I hope it works well for others. I have my papers sat on my desk (purposefully in the way) so I remember to consult them throughout the day to remind myself of what tasks I have to do.

Also, two other pointers:

I use this application called Stay Focused. It's an add-on for Google Chrome, and you can change all the settings so that it blocks you from certain websites for certain times. You can set it so that you can't go on Blogger or Facebook during work hours, or set it so that you can only go on it for 20minutes a day. It's up to you. It works great - during the day, when I'm supposed to be 'eating my frog', I tend to procrastinate and go on Facebook, or check my email about a dozen times. With this, I can stop myself from doing that all day, so I have more of a chance of staying focused.

And finally, my last tip. When I have to settle down and do my work, I find other things to do such as tidy my room until it is immaculate, or find something, such as my magazines, that need to be alphabetised right then, and the task seems so important I forget about my essays. What I've started to do, is to open up YouTube, and pick a song that I really like at the minute, and tell myself that I only have that much time to tidy up. That way I run around my room for around 4mins30, tidying up only the most important things, so that a) I have the 'tidying up' urge out of my system, b) my room is relatively tidy so I have space at my desk to sit down and do my work, and c) I don't spend an hour looking through my CDs.

This way, I manage to keep my procrastination down to a minimum (because I usually put the 'pro' into 'procrastination'), and manage to get around to doing most of my work without feeling stressed!

So there you have it. My organising tips. Quite a lot in one post. I felt that this was more of a pressing post than my knitting, because the only knitting that I have been doing recently is a scarf for Mother's Day, so it would have been a very short post, just like my scarf!

Until next time.