What a kitchen timer can tell you about focus

Tell me if you’ve heard this one. You leave work with no idea what if anything you got done. You end up staying in the office til midnight because you didn’t start to get anything done until 6pm when everyone else was leaving. Everything you do is the result of an urgent interuption and does not exist anywhere on your or your project’s schedule.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

First we have to understand why this is happening to you. The ‘well duh’ answer is you’re not focusing but, you already knew that. What do we know from experience about focus? We know the main killers of focus are interuptions, fatigue, and lack of a clear goal.

Interruptions

We know from the research that an unplanned interruption can cause your thought process to be disrupted. That distraction can take up to 20-30 minutes to recover from and that the average office worker’s day interruptions and distractions accounted for 2.1 hour or 28% of the total workday.¹ Actually the average office worker only spends about 12 minutes on a taks before context switching to another.² There is also anectdotal evidence from Paul Graham³ and Joel Spolsky⁴. Interruptions are coming at you from all over. Not only do you probably have co-worker and a (god forbid) open floor plan^{5 6}, you’ve got email and text alerts, and if that wasn’t enough the whole of human knowledge is just a click away (and so is Facebook and it’s infinite list of interesting tidbits).

Fatigue

How tired do you think you get remembering a string of numbers 7 digits in length compared to a 2 digit number? More than you know. Further that fatigue is causing you to make bad decisions. Something as simple as remembering a longer number depletes your ability to choose the decision for the long term good.⁷ Depeletes you enough that you are more likely to make a bad choice of snack after walking down a short hallway while holding that digit in your head. How much focus does it take to keep your code, your business plan, or anything else complex in your head? Pretty much anything that even resembles self-restraint exhausts your resources for focusing, including focusing. So, focusing makes it harder to focus over th long term but even not eating the douhnuts your co-worker brought in again makes it harder to focus.

Lack of a clear goal

We all do it. I’m doing it right now. Should I be writing this post or should I be working on the design for the blog? Not knowing what to do first or next leaves you thinking idle thoughts that distract you from the hard choice. I’m thinking about a snack right now. I just checked my email. This might even be the reason you’re here right now. You know you should be doing something else but, you’re either too tired to start or you just don’t know where to start. People write volumes about how to deal with a blank page like it’s some bougey man. From here on out you’re going to learn how to beat a blank page with 8 letter and a square on a whiteboard or sheet of paper.

Kitchen Timer to the Rescue

The Pomodoro Technique⁸ is a system of time management that allows you to reclaim and harness your focus at will. There’s a lot on that site and the technique can be very in depth and there is a bunch of different software you could download. Don’t worry about that. This is what you need to get started.

• A timer (your phone already has this)
• A whiteboard and marker or piece of paper and pen

Here’s the ultra condensed version: Pick a task. Set timer. Work only on that task. When timer is up take a short break. Repeat. After 3-4 cycles take a longer break.

Do it with me now.

Grab your paper and write planning on it with a box to the right of it. Set your timer to 25 minutes and hit start. Now break down your next tasks into actionable items. For this blog post they are:

• Write rough draft
• Cite references
• Self Edit
• Send to Reviewers

Right now I’m doing nothing but writing this post. No Facebook, no checking my email, nothing other than writing. This will be hard unusual at first. Your probably used to hitting some kind of entertainment every few minutes or so. If you find that you can’t focus for 25 minutes, dial it back to 20 or 15 to start and build up.

Add some estimates to your list

• Write rough draft ☐ ☐
• Cite references ☐
• Self Edit ☐ ☐ ☐
• Send to Reviewers ☐

Each box represents 25 minutes of work. Your estimates don’t have to be good especially at this point (or ever). Remember “plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”.

ding

• Planning ✓

Once your timer has completed and you’ve stayed on task put a checkmark in the box. If you’re not complete, you can add another box. Whether you’re complete or not now, stretch and take a short break, about 5 minutes should do. The one thing you can’t do during a break is work, see you in 5.

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Welcome back. You now know just enough of the technique to start using it. If you feel like you’re on a roll and want to start checking off some of those boxes go right ahead and come back after your first long break in about 2 or 3 more cycles. That’s right every 3 to 4 cycles you take a break of approx 30 minutes. If that sounds like a long time to you, just consider that length of time against how much of your day you already spend distracted, interrupted, or on social media.

How you are now more effective

You have a clear goal.

Simply having clearly defined and written goals improves performance and decision making.⁹ With 25 whole minutes to come up with a list I’m sure you came up with a lot. It’s probably in a pretty good order too given that is came off the top of your head in that order. They may not at this point be the most important or highest impact things but they are the things that you came up with. Planning improves with practice.

You are now rested.

We’ve talked about how focusing depletes your ability to make good decisions. Building rest and renual into your cycle keeps you operating at a higher level longer.

Internal interruptions are managed

Since you know that you have a break coming up where you can do that thing that you’re thinking about doing to distract yourself, it’s easier to not do now. Having a when for surfing the web, checking your mail, and going for a snack means that you don’t have to do it now.

You have a dirty social trick for external interruptions

You may have wondered what you should do if your cycle gets interrupted. If someone comes over to you at minute 15 and asks about something completely unrelated to what you’re working on; You draw a big fat X through your current “box” and reset the timer. I know from experience that after a short while people will start waiting until you’re on a break to ask you questions. You don’t have to say anything and mostly they won’t even recognize they’re doing it.

Even if your environment stays high interruption at the end of the day you will have a big list of Xs and will be able to go home knowing what happened to your time.

Cool story bro, where’s your research

I looked far and wide and googled for research on the Pomodoro Technique. I didn’t find any. What I did find is plenty of research on habit. To form a habit you need a cue, a behaviour, and a reward.¹⁰ In this case Starting the timer is the cue and if the timer ticks at the beginning that’s awesome. The behaviour is focus. The reward is whatever you are doing for yourself on break. Suddenly… well suddenly after 66 to 128 days you can call yourself to focus by clicking a button.

There are people who say, “I don’t need no stinking timer” and suggest that focus is simply a matter of willpower and by developing their willpower they will increase their focus. I’m not saying their wrong but, habitual behaviours don’t deplete willpower. In fact as your will power gets depleted your habits become stronger.¹¹ If you could get focus while not depleting your willpower or not depleting it as much wouldn’t that be awesome? As we saw in the earlier hallway and chocolate cake experiment willpower is fragile.

What now?

I encourage you to go back and use The Pomodoro Technique⁸ website. You can work to improve your estimating, reduce your interruptions, extend the amount of time you spend focused, reduce the number of interruptions both internal and exteral, et al. With even a small amount of practice you will find that it is easier to find a state of focus just by setting a timer.

You don’t need any special software but there are some good pieces out there. Some are just simple 25 minute timers and others manage tasks and go so far as to tell you how your estimation abilities have improved over time.