Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Thinking of your tasks in Pomodoro time

The Pomodoro Technique can be really helpful for breaking down your time and helping you make the most of it during your day.

This week’s tip comes from mcaneted, who applies the Pomodoro Technique to your Remember The Milk tasks so you can have everything set to go for your day!

For most of my tasks, especially the more laborious ones, I use the Pomodoro Technique to get the stuff done. If you haven’t heard of it, basically it consists of a time frame of 25 minutes concentrating on one task and take a short break (about 5 minutes). That’s one Pomodoro. Then repeat. Once you finish your fourth Pomodoro, you take a longer break (about 30 minutes), and begin from the start.

With this in mind, I recently started to plan my day “Pomodorely”.

This is how I do it:

First, I start by setting my goal number of Pomodori (in proper Italian) for the day. You can do that by subtracting from your total working hours your recurring tasks, meetings, lunch, and all the other “non Pomodorely” tasks/events you have for that particular day. It’s a good practice to leave a margin for possible unexpected events that can happen during the day.

Second, I tag my tasks with the number of Pomodori I expect it would take me to complete it. I work with the range from # 0,5p (I cheat the system) up to # 4p. If it takes more than that, it means I have to split the tasks into more manageable units. I have found that a single task with more than 4 Pomodori can get demotivating and at the end unproductive.

Third, engage! It will boost your productivity and make your dense tasks easier and more fun.

And that’s it! Hope you find it useful.

Thanks for sharing this tip, mcaneted! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

Do you have a suggestion for our weekly Tips & Tricks post? Got an interesting set-up or idea? Head over to the Tips & Tricks forum, add a new topic, and let us know how you use Remember The Milk. Each week we’ll give away a 1 year Pro account to the user whose idea inspires the Tips & Tricks Tuesday blog post for that week.