 You're listening to Barbell Logic brought to you by Barbell Logic Online Coaching where each week we take a systematic walk through strength training and the refining power of voluntary hardship Welcome to the Barbell Logic podcast the principle series where we talk about principles that have shaped our everyday lives and positive ways quality of life sort of issues and Today I wanted to talk about What we call the Pomodoro which my little brother Chris introduced me to years ago Last week we talked about the quadrants of things that are urgent and important and We primarily use the Pomodoro which is undistracted work blocks of time for undistracted work. I'll let Chris introduce that While tackling those issues that are both urgent and important so Chris. Thanks for being on the show again Tell me a little bit about where did you discover this is old? This has been around for a while Yeah, it actually it looks like it actually was invented or maybe first published in the late 80s by a guy named Francesco Cirillo and He's an Italian guy, which is actually where the Pomodoro phrase came from. It's a means of tomato It's like tomato timer. Yeah, you guys remember remember your when you like your grandma had the old kitchen timer that was in the shape of a tomato that was had sort of a Had sort of an equator around it And you could you could twist the two the bottom half in the top half apart and it would tick tick tick tick tick tick Right well now we have timers on our phones So we don't have to use these old kitchen timers But that was originally what this was based on was how to use a kitchen timer to work efficiently. That's exactly right and This was introduced to me by two colleagues at work at the same time So I can't actually credit one individual over another. I think it was really becoming a hot topic within circles of programmers which is my background and you it makes total sense that programmers would be some of the early people to adopt this because You have to be in the flow state of work for a very long period of time as a programmer We talk a little bit about context switches within the programming world and it applies to humans Fascinatingly so the basic idea is just if you're working on something in programming You have a huge amount of context in your brain And if somebody comes up and taps you on the shoulder and asks you about something else You have to ditch all that knowledge that's in your brain for a minute answer their question Grab that knowledge put it back in your brain and re get into the context It's been estimated that that costs you about 20 minutes in programming It's that hard to get back into the the flow state and so a couple of friends of mine that that worked with me Mentioned this to me and they said you know you should really read up on the Pomodoro technique And part of this just because I Productivity hacks were always very interesting to me. I always liked that So they sent me Looking into the Pomodoro and so I found several articles on it read through the original Pomodoro paper Which you can find online by just looking up Pomodoro technique the Wikipedia article is also Fascinating it's a very good source of information on the Pomodoro But the basic concept is incredibly simple. It's just what you do is You set a 25 minute timer now this the amount of time is not quite as important as the principles underneath the time So you'll notice over as you progress through doing Pomodoro's you might actually adjust the time quite a bit in various directions, but For 25 minutes you stay absolutely Dedicated to one thing that you're trying to get done You do not do two things and you never allow an interruption an interruption means that the Pomodoro was failed and you have to start it over again and The basic idea behind this is to keep you in that state of flow and to keep you from having to do a Context switch which is incredibly expensive Especially for knowledge workers that have things in their head and they're they're working on trying to get something done But I even noticed when my wife and I were remodeling a house that you know Spending all my time working on a particular area of the house Context switch was also expensive. So for those of you that do more like labor style jobs. I think it's still very beneficial the basic idea 25 minutes you stayed absolutely focused you do not use the restroom you do not go get a drink there are a million ways we distract ourselves on purpose because we're a little bit bored with what we're doing and You you cannot allow those things to happen or you will not be very efficient at the process and then at the end of the 25 minutes You check a checkbox off. So, you know, I did it You take a five minute break and the five minute break is actually very very important You got to get up. That's your time to use the restroom get a drink You don't grab some coffee whatever maybe for me It would I'd get outside and just look off a distance I'd notice I get some ice-drain if I was staring at my computer for too long You whatever you need to do during that period of time then you sit down and you start the timer again and you keep going It's amazing how over time You can build up the ability to do more and more and more Pomodoro's in a day. So a Pomodoro would be a unit of 25 minutes Yeah, or even 30 minutes 25 minutes of work and five minutes of rest So you introduced this to me years probably a decade ago and I started using it in everything that I did Outside of those things that were important but not urgent, right? So anything in those first three quadrants that we talked about last week I would I would either delegate or automate or I Pomodoro and so to this day I still do that And so some of my tips that I use on a on a daily basis is I talked about this last week I get up really early because there are less distractions early Pomodoro's work well for me the first two or three hours. I'm awake every morning. That's the best Pomodoro time I have it's much more difficult for me to do Pomodoro's at three o'clock in the afternoon because my phone is blowing up now number two The best thing I can do to cut distractions is to turn off all of the notifications Off of my phone and off of my computer. So I don't get notifications for emails for texts for slack Which has become a huge part of this no social media. I don't need I don't even have Facebook on my phone I you know no social media notifications. I have them off of my computer as well Because those notifications become a massive distraction and then for me I always have a blank sheet of paper That's sitting on my desk that if something pops into my head like oh, we need to pick this up at the grocery store I can just write whatever cilantro and I'm right back to work because Trying to hold the idea of I need to pick up cilantro at the grocery store this afternoon Actually takes up more bandwidth in my head. I want to free the bandwidth up So it's not that you're not allowed a three-second distraction It's that you get that distraction on paper as fast as possible So that it doesn't have to take up bandwidth in your head and that is how I get tons of work accomplished now We've done this anytime I have the leadership team come out and we work together either here in Springfield or if we're on a business trip together We do Pomodoro's together as a team like we sit down at a conference table And we'll talk a little bit do our thing a lot of times eat breakfast drink coffee Whatever like okay, we're gonna start Pomodoro's is everybody ready and a lot of times We'll even go around the table really quick and we'll say what is the thing you're working on for the next Pomodoro So that there's some accountability there, right? So my editor-in-chief says I'm working on this article my my VP of marketing says this is what I'm doing, right? And we go all the way around the table everybody says this is what we're doing Okay, here we go start we do the Pomodoro at 25 minutes. We take our break Five minutes everybody goes pee gets coffee Maybe checks for text checks or emails Whatever they need to do and then we sit down again and say okay How how'd it go? Do you have more left to do or are you ready to move on to the next thing? And we'll knock out four five six Pomodoro's in a row as a team and at the end every single time my entire team's like Oh my god, this is amazing. How much work I got done and so it works every single time But the story I wrote an article for Barbara logic last year about this you can go on Barbara logic You search Pomodoro My daughter Kalin's 14 very easily distracted most 14 year olds are but she's very easily distracted and She when of course we homeschool and so she doesn't have enough work Even though we use a very tough curriculum to work eight or nine hours a day And yet I noticed she was working eight or nine hours a day I was like what's going on and she's like I can't get all my work done I was like whoa hold on so so of course I didn't make her get up before 30 But I think I set the alarm for 6 30 in the morning Had her get up at 6 30 come down in the office and we just did Pomodoro's together and in like three Pomodoro She was done with all of her work as a freshman in high school in an hour and a half and she was like oh my god This is a this is ridiculous. I'm like no this works now You can spend the rest of your day at 14 years old doing whatever you want You want to go like play on tiktok or watch YouTube or go shopping at the mall or do whatever you can do those things And we don't let you do those things unless your schoolwork is done So now she has a strategy leader schoolwork done faster so that she can go do the things that are important to her as a 14 year old Absolutely Pomodoro's are a fascinating Way to get into two concepts that are complementary and they actually affect each other Across the rest of your life and that is the idea of how to ignore things that actually don't matter Yeah, and also how to really pay attention and be present to the things that you are doing It almost forces you to do that it's very close To what you read about and it's popular now But at the time that I read Pomodoro's it wasn't it wasn't really a thing that people were talking about and that is things like Meditation right where what you're actually doing is you're focusing on one thing and a distraction is Something that you might make note of they even use those words make note well in Pomodoro You know you used an example earlier where you keep a piece of paper there. That's actually part of the process To write down the idea so it's not trapped in your head and taking up space or looping and The same is true in your life when you're playing with your kids If you are actually not there in your head, you're doing something else. You're worrying about something else Then you're not giving them your undivided attention. You're not enjoying it as much all those things Pomodoro's are a very interesting way to help you see how much your mind Wants to avoid doing the thing it is you're trying to do how much it will fight boredom Or even the slightest just is looking for that dopamine hit of you know getting on Social media and taking a look at what's going on or whatever There is Pomodoro's are a structured technique to make sure that you absolutely get 25 minutes of something done That's right, and it's fascinating the more you get into it How easy it is to do more inside of a day? I can't remember what my top number was but it was in the upper 20s of the number of consistent Pomodoro's I could pull off you were programming like crazy You would say you could do eight hours of Pomodoro's which would be 16 Pomodoro's Yeah, it took years to get to where I was capable of doing that. I can't I can't do that That's more more even than I can do certainly certainly in it just about a row One of the techniques for Pomodoro's for most people is after they do Three or four of these they need to take a longer break five minute break is not enough for most people They'll need to take a 30 minute break an hour break Go walk do something active get some blood flow. It's a really good time to work out things like that So we talked about the the strategies for distraction to make sure the notifications are off your Phones computers, etc. We talked about the for us finding times that are That are Harder for people to distract you which for us is early in the morning But that's not what it would be for everybody but find those times that there's less chance of being distracted I always try to go in a private room when I do this stuff like people that work in coffee shops I don't understand how they do that because there's too much distraction for me Now I've had to do it before I've had to do it at airport lounges and on airplanes and and to me That's where earphones like noise canceling headphones work really really well And of course, you know your eyes are focused on a screen But the more you have things going in front of your face And distracting your eyesight that that is a potential problem. And so I try to I try to really focus in on my eyes see this my ears hear this There are no notifications popping up on my phone or computer my family is sleeping. So there's no like auditory distractions I have it to the to the sound piece of that too that I used very frequently when I was in a chaotic situation I traveled a lot while I was programming also and you know Airplanes or airports airports, especially are just total chaos, right? Right and so I you actually wrote a paper on this and I was in agreement your Sound cancelling headphones that go over your ears are extremely valuable But there's another trick to that which is if you take a foam earplug And you put it in your ears And then you take sound cancelling headphones and put it over your ears and play white noise The world goes away. I mean it is absolutely fantastic how much I mean you'll look around and you don't know what's going on Outside in terms of sound So if you're someone I am particularly distracted by sound sound, I'm super sound sensitive Um visually not so much I can block out things visually but sound just affects me terribly If you're in a similar boat, you know buy a giant box of those foam earplugs they don't go bad and uh and then get some over your ear sound cancelling headphones play white noise in it and You'll notice that that the world falls away the last point I want to make here is that if we tie this back to last week in that we try to Get rid of the things in our life as much as possible that are not urgent not important We try to delegate or automate for the most part the things that are urgent But not important and for the things that I cannot delegate and still have to do Then I use pomodoros for those I use pomodoros primarily for that third quadrant of things that are urgent and important And I very rarely use pomodoros for the final quadrant and I'll say I'll put the caveat with this If it has to do with relationships I would never pomodor like I don't want efficiency of time When it comes time to going on a date with my wife or playing with my kids Uh, but you have noted and it's true. I do like efficiency of time for things like reading for things like working out I like I like timed rest periods for we've all seen people who work out And they take three hours to do a workout because they just lolly gag the whole time like that's not That's a waste of time to spend three hours on a workout If your workout takes longer than 90 minutes, especially if you're if you're not an advanced lifter It shouldn't take longer than an hour But if it takes longer 90 minutes you're lolly gagging and you've talked about using pomodoros for things like reading books Like books are important to you And so you try to give your reading 25 minutes of undistracted time so that your mind can really hone in and focus on the thing You're reading Absolutely, yeah, and I mean I think there are other advantages too on the things that are not relationship oriented And I agree with you wholeheartedly on the relationship side dedicate your time to those people and don't don't time it When it comes to reading what's interesting is if you time it you can also track some things So i'm a little bit of a data geek and some people most people aren't but if you are One thing you'll notice is you've got a consistent time factor You can figure out how many pages you normally read inside that period of time And it's easy for you to project out how long it's going to take you to complete a book or 50 books However many you know you're doing so there are advantages in there of running those and then additionally Just keeping the distractions out, you know if i'm going to go through a book And somebody interrupts me in the middle of of my 25 minute reading period You know normally i'll just say you just hang tight until i'm till i'm done with this section And i'll get with you you know in in a few minutes And that allows me to stay head down on on the reading that i want to get done because it's it's very important to me And what i do right now awesome, so takeaway there is Everybody that's listening to this has things that they know they need to do Often those things are things you don't really want to do that much But you know you need to get them done They're both urgent and important a pomodoro is a great strategy To attack that to get it done as quickly as possible so that it opens up your schedule To do more of the things and be present for the things that are important But not so urgent so next time you get a chance like tomorrow morning Do some pomodoro's and see how fast you get this work knocked out Thank you for listening again. This has been another episode of barbologic podcast principle series And we'll see you next week