Tomato Time
I was a terrible procrastinator as a kid. I'd always wait until the night before to start any assignment, and then panic as the task seemed impossible before me. I like to think I've shed many of those traits; if anything, I now tend to prioritize my to-do list late into the evening rather than simply sit on the couch with a video game, for example. It's a work in progress.
The hardest part is always simply getting started. Many of the things I strive for—becoming fluent in Japanese, becoming a published novelist—can't be accomplished in a single day. It's a marathon not a sprint and all that. Even so, I find that easy to know, and harder to do. Yet often I find when I sit down and force myself to start, the rest comes easy. That's where the pomodoro technique comes in.
The pomodoro technique, named for a tomato-shaped timer, is a productivity technique where you set a timer for 25 minutes, and resolve to work on one task during that 25 minute span. Once the timer goes off, you take a 5 minute break. I've known about it for years, but it wasn't until I did the excellent "Learning How to Learn" web course that I really found the utility in it. Truly, getting started is the hardest part. If I can convince myself to just work for a little bit, before I know it I've finished everything I set out to.
I still find pomodoros useful; I actually just picked up a timer for my desk specifically for this purpose. But they have their limitations. 25 minutes is a short amount of time. It makes getting started easy, but getting into flow state hard, if you're a strict adherent. There's a balance at play here. Rather than chip away at things little by little when inspiration strikes, I've shifted more towards doing things every day, or close to it, to see real progress. But even there I find you have to dig a bit deeper. If you only work on say learning a language for 25 minutes a day, true, it's a lot better than none, but it's going to take a long time to reach any sort of useful competency in it. That might be fine—we all have our own goals—but I think it's good to be clear-eyed about it.
I've seen this in my guitar practice lately. I'm learning on my own, as I'm still very early on in my journey, and lessons are a bit out of my budget now. There's tons of free resources to teach yourself guitar, like most things, but it can be difficult to structure a practice routine. I've started to build one out for myself, based on advice I've seen online from educators and skilled players. It wasn't quite my intention, but the routine I came up with is just under 30 minutes. But I've started to realize that's not quite enough. I'm trending towards maintenance rather than progress, which is what I really want.
I'm trending towards maintenance rather than progress, which is what I really want.
Of course, this isn't really a problem in and of itself. I'm just learning for fun, with no aspirations or desire to become a professional musician; it doesn't really matter how long it takes. And I could simply set up my routine differently, focus more on pushing myself rather than keeping up the skills I've had (I've started to spend much more time on learning new songs to push my skills, for example). But still I think there's something illustrative here. If you want to be a writer, it's awesome to get your 300/500/1k words out in a day. But unless you're eventually circling back around and editing, rewriting, and tweaking that output, you're only going to end up with a lot of spent paper.
A big part of the impetus behind my revised daily schedule was to factor in more deep focus time. I yearn for flow state. One of my friends told me recently that he finds flow state most when bouldering and at work, pulling focus for films. I think it's important to not only seek out and think about what activities let you slip into flow state, but also strive to find flow state in the things you aim for; something I find hard to do 25 minutes at a time.
