Answered By: James Burke
Last Updated: Aug 12, 2015     Views: 179

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management philosophy that aims to provide the user with maximum focus and creative freshness, thereby allowing them to complete projects faster with less mental fatigue. The process is simple. For every project throughout the day, you budget your time into short increments and take breaks periodically. You work for 25 minutes, then take a break for five minutes.

Each 25 minute work period is called a "pomodoro", named after the Italian word for tomato. Francesco Cirillo used a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato as his personal timer, and thus the method's name. After four "pomodoros" have passed, (100 minutes of work time with 15 minutes of break time) you can take a 15-20 minute break.

Every time you finish a pomodoro, you mark your progress with an "X", and note the number of times you had the impluse to procrastinate or switch gears to work on another task for each 25-minute chunk of time.

Check out pomodorotechnique.com for a helpful video and app you can download (some LITS staff use the pomodoro technique!). Also for questions on naptime - visit saramednick.com - she is a researcher who conducts studies on nappng. The site provides many napping tools.

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