How to Manage Your Working Time
If you are — or want to be — an IT developer, it’s very important to stay focused on your tasks and give everything you have to solve them. Especially if you are working from home, there are dozens of factors trying to distract you — and subconsciously, you may be tempted to use them. […]
Technologies
If you are — or want to be — an IT developer, it’s very important to stay focused on your tasks and give everything you have to solve them. Especially if you are working from home, there are dozens of factors trying to distract you — and subconsciously, you may be tempted to use them.
To stay focused on work, I use the Pomodoro method. Pomodoro is a time management method based on 25-minute stretches of focused work, broken by five-minute breaks. After four work intervals, I recommend taking a longer break of 20–30 minutes.
What Are the Benefits of Using the Pomodoro Method?
- It helps you stay focused on the task and avoid distractions.
After about 30 minutes of continuous work, your brain starts finding reasons to get distracted.
- It prevents mental burnout.
Completing small tasks in a short period of time helps you experience small successes within larger, more complex tasks.
- It increases the quality of your work.
Short breaks help you refresh before starting work again. It often happens that a small mistake or typo can cause hours of continuous research to find the problem. But if you take a break, it helps you refresh and see the problem from a different perspective.
What Tips Do I Have for Using This Method?
- During your breaks, I don’t recommend doing a similar activity — like looking at your phone. I personally prefer doing push-ups.
- Adapt the duration of your Pomodoros to your goals and project needs. If you don’t have enough time to concentrate deeply, try proportionally increasing the duration of work and breaks — for example, work for 50 minutes and rest for 10–20 minutes. If you have a lot of small tasks, you can shorten the Pomodoro timer.
- When planning your day with Pomodoro, select your highest priority tasks and estimate how long each will take.
Which Tool Should You Choose?
I personally prefer the Focus To-Do app for macOS. But you can also simply use a basic timer — the most important thing is the desire to become better.
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