(Pomodoros have been talked about a bunch on LW. I, like elharo, first started using the technique after attending a CFAR workshop. Cross-posted from my blog.)

The pomodoro technique is, in short, starting a timer and doing 25 minutes of focused work on a single task without interruption, followed by a five minute break. Choose a new task, restart the timer, and repeat.

Throughout 2013 I used pomodoros to execute on pretty much all of my life projects, organized into the following categories:

work – at MIRI
bizdev – other income-generating projects
growth – personal development projects (e.g. reading books, taking notes, making Anki decks; monthly reviews)
misc – miscellaneous life maintenance projects (e.g. banking stuff, knocking off a bunch of small todo’s, house cleanup)
health – exercise projects (mostly climbing, some running, some misc other stuff)

The Result: 5,008 Pomodoros

The end result was 2,504 hours of recorded work—5,008 pomodoros in total:

Stacked Pomodoros by Week in 2013

A summary, by category (with hours in brackets):

work – 2,457 (1,228.5h) – 47.3 (23.7h) avg/week
bizdev – 700 (350h) – 13.5 (6.7h) avg/week
growth – 996 (498h) – 19.2 (9.6h) avg/week
misc – 448 (224h) – 8.6 (4.3h) avg/week
health – 407 (203.5h) – 7.8 (3.9h) avg/week

Grand Total: 5,008 (2,504h) – 96.3 (48.2h) avg/week

My version of the pomodoro technique

To be clear, I didn’t use the pomodoro technique 100% faithfully. Certain things here, such as most Health (exercise) stuff, I never actually ran a pomodoro timer. But since I had a system for tracking where and how I spent my time, and since “claiming” all that time helped motivate me e.g. to climb regularly, I included them.

Ways I deviate from the “true” pomodoro technique:

I don’t always take breaks. For example, if I do two pomodoros, get in the zone, and work for another two hours straight, I’d still record that as 6 pomodoros (3 hours) total.
I don’t always use a timer. Sometimes I just start working, remembering to take small intermittent breaks, and record the total time in pomodoros (4h of work = 8 pomodoros).
I don’t record interruptions. You’re supposed to track all internal and external interruptions, but I don&rsq

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