You all know about the Pomodoro Technique. You set intervals of ~25 minutes with a 5 minute break. Every 4 Pomodori you take a 30 minute break. This supposedly helps you get more work done.
It’s also stupid.
How are you supposed to get excited about an endless string of bland, tasteless, faux-Italian factory-farmed American rubber tomatoes?
That’s what working on pomodoros is like. Hit the timer. Break. Work. Repeat ad nauseum. Monotony. No sense of accomplishment.
Or, “Oh, hey, I counted my pomodoros. I’m officially pathetic.”
Or your 25 minutes gets interrupted, as it almost always does, and “Oh Darwin do I still count it or pause or start over or what?”
Gay. Fuck that. I’d rather just work. Why bother with the interruptions if they only make it worse?
Then I found something much, much better: the PowerDoro. Now THAT’S American.
PowerDoro’s combine HIIT (high intensity interval training) with my compressible work theory. Another way of putting the latter concept is, “Always be finishing.”
Here’s the method:
1. Start a compressible task. I.e., you could spend significantly too long on it.
2. Start your timer at 5 minutes. Attempt to complete the task in that time, no matter how ridiculously impossible.
3. Beep. Set to 10 min. Try again.
3. Beep. Set to 20 min. Try again.
Congrats, you completed a PowerDoro.
I don’t go to 40 minutes because that permits me to start wandering off into less productive bunny trails. The 5-10-20 prevents monotony, and compels a sense of urgency, competitiveness, adrenaline, excitement, etc.
Really this is a cross-fertilization from speed reading. You condition yourself to go too fast. Then you just keep going at that speed and get used to it. So this is speed reading, for work.
The reason speed reading rules (besides conditioning and motion inefficiency) is that it’s better to get a fast overview and then drill down on the important bits on the second or third pass.
Ditto for work. Always be finishing.
Over and out. I’m on a Doro.
Update:
Key to PowerDoros – after each one, check your long term dream purpose. accelerate to get there. that’s how you keep the compression juice going. That’s how you always be closing.
For me, all I have to do is look at my hands to remember that my purpose is to plant a Dark Enlightenment Thal/Forerunner phalange, raise it to a sapling with roots sunk deep in the rich fringe of the burgeoning Sinosphere and foliage waving in anarchic Internet breeze, and then transplant it to colonize Western collapse for the retaking of a White homeland.
But that’s too long, so I just look at my hand.
On, and Chinese high-schoolers LOVE the Dark Enlightenment. Just sayin.
