Productivity with Pomodoro and Flow

Hello, and welcome to the travelling introvert . Today, I'd like to talk about work stands, I guess, and, talk about the difference and the the issues that can happen with pomodoro versus flow state. So there are very different ways of working, but you can use one to work into the other. So with pomodoro, it's generally based on sort of 25 minutes of work, 5 minutes of rest, 25 minutes of work, 5 minutes of rest for a certain amount amount of cycles, and then you have a larger period of rest. And so a lot of people love that because it gives them set breaks and gives them enough time to kind of focus on a thing and go ahead and then get into flow state. Now people have different flexible ways of using porter door. It might be 25 minutes. It might be 35 minutes and then a 10 minute break or a 5 minute break.

I find that a 30 minutes of work and then 10 minute breaks, 30 minutes work, 10 minute break, 30 minutes work is a nice, like, 3 hour oh, and do that a 2 hour sort of block. It works out time wise. In fact, oh, 2 hours, I can do that sort of a thing. What some people might find is that when they hit the 25 minute mark or the 35 minute mark, it's actually an interruption. And so, yes, they take the break, but then they find it hard to get back into whatever it is that they were doing. And so there are no set rules with these kind of things and I think people get really stuck with that, well, I have to do 50 minutes work or I have to do 25 minutes work or I have to do insert amount of work here, and really you can adjust it in a way that works for you. For example, there's some people who are very much like, I can work really well writing whatever it might be for about an hour, an hour 15 and then I start to get a little sluggish. Their pomodoros, and I'm using that in in air quotes, are sort of 1 hour 20 pomodoros, and then they take a 20 minute break or whatever it might be.

You have to figure out what how long flow state looks like for you, and it might even depend on the sort of tasks that that you are doing. The flow state is that when you're, like, really in the zone and everything's flowing, everything's going well, and so you wanna keep going. And so Pomodoro's might sort of interrupt you with their time for you to take a break. If you're in flow and you can keep going, keep going. No one says you have to take that break, but it's just to make you aware of how much work you're doing in one go. And so what you could do is just figure out, okay. If I'm doing writing tasks, I can do writing for this amount of time before I need to take a break. So you could have writing pomodoros, for example, that are only 20 minutes long.

Maybe you can only write for 20 minutes, and then you stop, and then you take a break, and then you come back and do something else. It could be, for admin work maybe or email clearing. Maybe you can do an hour of that or 45 minutes of that. That can be your portal and then you take a break, and a break can look different for different people. There are some people where a break would be like a little treat so they get to watch a YouTube video or play games on their phone, but other people they have to get up and like walk outside. That's their idea of a break. It is really individual to you but you do have to take some time and some tweaking to figure out what that looks like and how that works for you. And so there isn't necessarily one versus one thing versus another thing being better or worse.

It's what works for you. And another thing to throw into the mix would be sort of the fishbowl where you have a bunch of little itty bitty tasks that you've been putting off and so maybe you give yourself and you write these down on maybe a piece of paper or, a post it note and you put it in a bowl, a container, a mug, whatever you've got around and then you go ahead and you like, okay. I've got 30 minutes. I'm gonna work my way through some of these things even though it is stressful. And so you might go, oh, okay. I have to make that doctor's appointment. Oh, I have to do this other thing. Oh, I have to do this other thing, and then you just keep picking things up at random out of the fishbowl.

There is, random task picker online that that can do that for you, put all the tasks in, and then it randomizes and gives you the task. The idea is that you follow through and actually do the task, so that can be a thing. But once again, it's what works for you to get you through the things that you need to do to be productive. And sometimes you have outside things that that get in the way like meetings. But if you do have full control over what your workload and and your work day looks like, here's the things to try, Kind of try and figure out what works for you. Maybe block out days to try it and other days to try different things. But just to say there is not one size fits all and it is. Try it.

Try it. See what happens. See what the results are. Thank you for listening. This is Janice at the Career Introvert helping you build your brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.