The Pomodoro Technique

[Richard C]

Has anybody come across this time management technique. It looks
really interesting and aligns with some stuff I have been trying to do
with MLO - namely short term planning (ie: for the next few days)
which GTD and other time management just don't seem to address (but I
am not an expert)

The website is here http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

I think there are any featues in MLO that could be used to work with
this technique (or visa versa). However, the key thing that is
missing from MLO is a better mechanism for recording estimated time
and for adding up time.

The Pomodoro technique uses 'Pomodoros' as its unit of effort
estimation and time measurement which are half hour blocks (go to the
website to find out why he calls them pomodoros) For each
significant task, you estimate how many of these time blocks it will
take to complete (eg this is a 4 Pomodoro task) and you then add up
the total number of Pomodoros you have for the task that you have
planned for the day and compare this to the number that you know you
are able to complete in a day.

So if was possible to calibrate the Task Effort slider using numbers
(eg 1, 2, 3, etc) and if you could then show the total of the Task
Effort for all the tasks in a group (eg a day), then this would really
help with planning.

And I feel sure that many of the other features of the technique could
also be supported by MLO - either as is, or with some relatively minor
enhancements which would (hint) potentially open up a new market for
MLO (over 6500 people downloaded the book in one month).

Just for the record: I have no relationship with the people other
than the fact that it looks as if it addresses areas which I have yet
to see any other technique address

Richard

[Mark Levison]

I and much of the Agile Software Development community have been using it for years.

		Mark Levison | Founder and Consultant - TheAgileConsortium | Agile Editor @ InfoQ Blog | Twitter | Office: (613) 761-9821 Recent Entries: Agile Mailing Lists a Survey, Do You Suspect You Have a Less than Productive Person on Your Team?

[Richard Collings]

Yes - so I gather but as a peripheral member of that community, it had completely passed me by up until now.  

 

One of the things that I liked about it from an initial scan was the fact that he draws on the work of a range of other interesting people one of whom is Tom Gilb who, it could be argued, originated many of the agile concepts 15 years before they became fashionable and who has been one of my guiding lights since the mid 1980's.

 

Are you using MLO in a Pomodoro sort of way?  If so, I would be really interested to hear how.

[Mark Levison]

Sorry for the delay in replying. My focus recently has been on generating business :-)

I see MLO and Pomodoro as orthogonal. I use MLO to keep track of a large list of tasks. Mostly I just use the outline to remind of thinks I want to tackle. Daily I glance at the TODO view to make sure that there isn't anything that is date sensitive that I've lost track of. Once it comes to committing to tasks for a day I often use Index cards using MLO, email and anything else as inputs. At the end of a day (sometimes two) I take anything that remains in the card and put into MLO. Then I tear up the card that's probably the most fun part.

Other habits

- I sweep my tabs in firefox every few days and move stuff to reading lists in MLO.

- Once/Twice a week I go offline and go through my email (which is how I'm answering this one).

- Once a week I take some time to reflect - what is going well; needs improvement; what need do I have the energy to improve; what one thing can I do next week to improve it. Aka a retrospective. This is the hardest one to maintain - because you're tempted to skip it and get more "work" done. Yet its the most important because it drives real improvement.

I really only use the Pomodoro for:

- a reminder to stay on task

- a way of doing rough estimation every morning

Also on a two monitor setup under Win7 I dock MLO on the far left and leave it in outline mode where I can always see other things I want to do.

Other tools I use: ClipMate Explorer - because it allows me handle more than one item in the clipboard and to clean (i.e. remove html etc).

BTW Thanks for asking this question, it will be the kernel of blog post sometime in the future.

Cheers

Mark

Mark Levison | Co-Founder and Consultant - TheAgileConsortium | Agile Editor @ InfoQ

Blog | Twitter | Office: (613) 761-9821

Recent Entries: Agile Mailing Lists a Survey, Why use an Agile Coach

2009/11/13 Richard Collings <r...@rcollings.co.uk>

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[Lisa Stroyan]

At 11:50 AM 11/25/2009, you wrote:

Also on a two monitor setup under Win7 I dock MLO on the far left and leave it in outline mode where I can always see other things I want to do.

Man - that would help me so much.  but I work on a laptop.  But that leads me to a feature request :)

Lisa

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Lisa Stroyan, mailto:lstr...@gmail.com
www.empathic-parenting.com

[Damian Skeeles]

That is a good methodology! I always have the "out of sight, out of mind" problem, but that would be a great way to force me to GTD 

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[Aditya Bhattacharyya]

To be honest I had never heard of the Pomodoro Technique before and I tried it only after I read your mail. And I am glad I did. My execution has possibly improved (I am a procrastinator par excellence:)) but more importantly I have a much better feel of how much work I can handle in a day.

I have tried to implement the Pomodoro technique in MLO and this is what I have done.

I have used flags. I have assumed that on a perfect day I can execute 12 pomodoros and have enabled 12 flags naming them Pomo1 to Pomo 12. I also have a Planning Pomo flag and a Recording pomo flag. 

My "activity inventory list" is the MLO outline view. 

For my "activity for today list" I have enabled a view that shows me tasks that are due upto today + tasks I complete today. 

The filter I have used is 

Action Filter : All

In Advanced Filter 

* Rule 1 : DueDateTime on or before Today (AND)

* Rule 2 : Active Action is True       (OR)

* Rule 3 : CompletedDateTime on Today

In Group /Sort 

* Group by Flag

While in this view I decide which tasks would get done in which pomodoro and apply the appropriate pomo flag to the task. I capture the estimated time (in effort area) against each task. As soon as the sum of task times against a flag reaches 30 min, I assign the next pomo flag to the subsequent task and so on.

What about tasks that take more than 1 pomodoro to complete? What I am doing is that I create a duplicate of the task and assign the task to the next pomodoro flag. In any case I try and break up tasks so that each task is not more than 1 pomodoro long,so this is not such a huge issue.

Recording : I have enabled several views which looks at completed tasks by Top Parent (The top parent in my outline view captures my broad goals in life (Areas of Focus)), by day, by project etc that gives me a view to how i am doing and whether I am being productive enough. Going over these views is basically what I do as a part of my recording & review. If the time I take is very different from my estimate, I capture it in the notes area. It has issues because deviations from estimates being captured in notes which does not show in the column view. However since most of my tasks are 1 pomodoro or less, the deviations are not too great. However this is a weak area and I do not know how to solve it.

Another thing that I have done is I have enabled contexts based on the type of activity like @Call, @Learn, @Mail etc and try to bunch similar activity types in a pomodoro.

regards

Aditya

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[Aditya Bhattacharyya]

Forgot to add, I use the focus booster application as a timer http://www.focusboosterapp.com/

[Michael Hopkins]

Your method sounds hellish to me, but thank you very much for the link
to that app.

Frankly, I think MLO only needs an option to measure time in Pomodoros
instead of hours. All the recording, etc really belongs somewhere
else.

On Nov 27, 7:22 am, Aditya Bhattacharyya
<aditya.bhattachar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Forgot to add, I use the focus booster application as a timerhttp://www.focusboosterapp.com/

>
> On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 6:50 PM, Aditya Bhattacharyya <
>

> >> *From:* mylifeo...@googlegroups.com [mailto:
> >> mylifeo...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Mark Levison
> >> *Sent:* 13 November 2009 1:41 a
> >> *To:* mylifeo...@googlegroups.com
> >> *Subject:* [MLO] Re: The Pomodoro Technique

>
> >> I and much of the Agile Software Development community have been using it
> >> for years.
>
> >> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 5:18 PM, Richard C <r...@rcollings.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >>> Has anybody come across this time management technique.  It looks
> >>> really interesting and aligns with some stuff I have been trying to do
> >>> with MLO - namely short term planning (ie: for the next few days)
> >>> which GTD and other time management just don't seem to address (but I
> >>> am not an expert)
>

> >>> The website is herehttp://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

>
> >>> I think there are any featues in MLO that could be used to work with
> >>> this technique (or visa versa).  However, the key thing that is
> >>> missing from MLO is a better mechanism for recording estimated time
> >>> and for adding up time.
>
> >>> The Pomodoro technique uses 'Pomodoros' as its unit of effort
> >>> estimation and time measurement which are half hour blocks (go to the
> >>> website to find out why he calls them pomodoros)    For each
> >>> significant task,  you estimate how many of these time blocks it will
> >>> take to complete (eg this is a 4 Pomodoro task) and you then add up
> >>> the total number of Pomodoros you have for the task that you have
> >>> planned for the day and compare this to the number that you know you
> >>> are able to complete in a day.
>
> >>> So if was possible to calibrate the Task Effort slider using numbers
> >>> (eg 1, 2, 3, etc) and if you could then show the total of the Task
> >>> Effort for all the tasks in a group (eg a day), then this would really
> >>> help with planning.
>
> >>> And I feel sure that many of the other features of the technique could
> >>> also be supported by MLO - either as is, or with some relatively minor
> >>> enhancements which would (hint) potentially open up a new market for
> >>> MLO (over 6500 people downloaded the book in one month).
>
> >>> Just for the record:  I have no relationship with the people other
> >>> than the fact that it looks as if it addresses areas which I have yet
> >>> to see any other technique address
>
> >>> Richard
>

> >>     *Mark Levison* | Founder and Consultant - TheAgileConsortium<http://theagileconsortium.com/>| Agile
> >> Editor @ InfoQ <http://www.infoq.com/about.jsp>
> >> Blog <http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/> | Twitter<http://twitter.com/mlevison>| Office: (613) 761-9821
> >> Recent Entries: Agile Mailing Lists a Survey<http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/2009/06/agile-mailing-lists.html%20>,
> >> Do You Suspect You Have a Less than Productive Person on Your Team?<http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/2009/01/do-you-suspect-you-have-a-l...>

>
> >> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> >> "MyLifeOrganized" group.
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> >> mylifeorganiz...@googlegroups.com<mylifeorganized%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>