I've definitely tried pomodoro, recently actually. I like the idea of it, but I still struggle. I struggle with knowing where to start with the messes around me, they feel bigger than what I can fit into a small period of time. It's just overwhelming, and I think I also face issues around not actually finishing a task. Probably some perfectionism issues.
Thank you for sharing your insights on working with a timer. I can see a timer as really helping with the time blindness issue, but nobody ever really talks about the importance of the rest period in the ability to maintain your intellectual activity. The neuroscience I’ve been reading really emphasizes that our brains have limited capacity and that when we keep violating those limits we suffer for it in all kinds of ways.
Yes, absolutely! I loved the emphasis on rest as well. Such an important aspect that often gets forgotten and then we slip into feeling bad about ourselves for not being able to do more when really the brain is just tapped out for the day. It helps me to think of it like any kind of exercise. Athletes know how essential rest and recovery is for their muscles, and we need to adopt that mindset for the brain as well.
I think as we age, this trick of focus becomes more of a necessity due to limited energy vs. large manual task at hand. I am currently digging out and redesigning and landscaping my foundation plantings. Can I get it all done in one fell swoop? Absolutely not. Can I get up early most days til the heat of the day chases me indoors for a required shower? Yup. I also take copious breaks to admire my progress. It’s been slow but the progress is measurable and pleasant to admire. So, I am of the school that if you write two pages a day, you’ll have 500+ pages at years’ end. In other words, the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.
Okay but there's something I desperately need to know... How on earth do you get yourself to pick work back up once you've taken a break? I find that if I step away for more than a quick bathroom break or to refill my water, my brain procrastinates and procrastinates getting back to work. It just absolutely refuses even though I really want to and I have no idea how to make it happen.
I find that if during the 5 minute break I focus on really not doing anything (not checking my email or social media, no quick phone calls) but really just letting my brain rest, then it's easier to get back to the task. But I hear you that the longer the break the harder it is to get back to it.
Superpowers are often super problems; nothing is all good or all bad, and often things are equally as bad as they are good.
Cookies are super delicious and super bad for you. Rice is less delicious and less bad for you. If you have blood sugar issues, though, even brown rice has a high glycemic index (50), and most white rice (72) is basically Skittles (70).
Focus is a super power but it has drawbacks; there are serious daily limits to how much a biological creature can produce.
Deliberate practice is applying a skill to the edge of your abilities, not merely repeating something without paying extreme attention. According to top performance / excellence researchers like K. Anders Ericsson, deliberate practice (DP) is the only way to significantly improve over time. The limits vary, but for extremely high performers engaging in DP the limits are as low as four solid hours a day.
I’m fiercely interested in excelling at whatever I do (it’s just how my mind works; I don’t feel satisfied unless I’m giving it my all). So deliberate practice is the path for me! But wow—only four hours a day?? And people who do DP that much ALSO have to rest like maniacs to achieve that output. I read Einstein slept ten hours a night!
I do everything in my human capacity to optimize my life, which makes sense since I’m a life coach. I’d sure be a crap one if I didn’t!!
But as I move pieces around on the inner chess board of biohacking / self-coaching / optimizing, I hit this wall over and over and over.
Here’s a ridiculous sequence of events:
1. I try to do a piece of inner work I don’t have the ability to do yet.
2. I over-trigger my nervous system.
3. My firefighters (in Internal Family Systems, the circuit breakers of the nervous system) pop.
4. I fall back into old habits in a harm-reduction way—instead of eating cookies and kombucha (12 g/sugar per bottle) I overeat fruit and drink fizzy, moderately-sugary drinks (6 g/sugar per bottle) and my sleep gets out of whack.
Ugh! Deliberate practice has to take into account one’s capacity to handle more and more difficult tasks. Staying in the orange zone where things are hard, but not too hard, is the goal. I had a two-week fruit, fizzy drink and dysregulated sleep binge because I went into the red zone where things were simply beyond my abilities. I had to take a break and regroup.
Here’s the NEXT ridiculous sequence of events:
1. A long-standing challenge is going to bed on time because I have no wind-down routine at night.
2. I invest thousands of dollars in an at-home Radiant Health low EMF infrared sauna in the hope it would relax me at night to solve this problem.
3. I go through the immense difficulty of getting 470 pounds of wood and glass up three flights of stairs.
4. I start to sauna at night.
5. I have a nightly routine that works!!
6. About four days into my new routine, I feel so clear-headed, rested and on point that I don’t want to stop working before I sauna. I’m a whirling dervish of productivity!
7. I go to bed late paradoxically because I felt so good from going to bed on time for a few days.
8. WTF!!! I have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory!!!
So then I’m under-rested and spend the next few days recovering from overdoing it, and get much less done than usual to pay for the day I got “too much” done.
All this to say, I feel this post Chris!!! Rest and recovery are my kryptonite, but I’ll keep plugging away, one ridiculous sequence of events at a time, until I can rest and recover like a champion.
WHY THIS IS SO: Thinking is like an electric connection between brain cells. The gap your thoughts jump across is filled with a gel-like substance that is conductive. But that gel tires after the same synapses are activated over and over, like when writing about a topic. Only rest and distraction will allow the gel to recharge. And the amount of rest will vary by person and intensity of the thinking that exhausted the gel.
Discovering this really helped me accept that those rest periods are not a nice to have, they are a must do.
“My thirst is quenched in the silence and stillness of a break.” What a lovely way to express this. I love the concept of refreshment (“a place of refreshment, light, and peace”), and this expresses that concept very well.
Last week was so intense at work that by Friday I reached my cognitive limit about 5 minutes after I woke up. No Pomodoro timer can save me in those moments 😂 But, after some rest and breaks over the weekend I'm ready to go again.
Focus, recovery and limitations… I have never read explained that way before, but it does make a lot of sense. I can see from this understanding the reason for some of my struggles. Thx Chris for writing.
Wonderful, insightful post! Many of our clients use the Pomodoro technique, but without understanding the neuroscience behind their brains and behaviors and the power of routine and consistency, they can be rendered futile.
Pomodoro works well for me. However I also have a sort of super Pomodoro setting. I just came through several months of extreme pressure juggling both my day job and a stressful evening project. I purposefully took two weeks break and got away from a screen as much as possible but now I'm trying to get back to screen focus my body/brain is still rebelling. The fatigue is unbelievable almost like my burnout from about 20 years ago....
Such a great post. I've been trying to work with my Uni son on this - the benefits of short hyper focus periods and then rest. It should be compulsory teaching in schools 🤣
I've definitely tried pomodoro, recently actually. I like the idea of it, but I still struggle. I struggle with knowing where to start with the messes around me, they feel bigger than what I can fit into a small period of time. It's just overwhelming, and I think I also face issues around not actually finishing a task. Probably some perfectionism issues.
Thank you for sharing your insights on working with a timer. I can see a timer as really helping with the time blindness issue, but nobody ever really talks about the importance of the rest period in the ability to maintain your intellectual activity. The neuroscience I’ve been reading really emphasizes that our brains have limited capacity and that when we keep violating those limits we suffer for it in all kinds of ways.
Yes, I had a lot to learn about rest! And probably still do.
Yes, absolutely! I loved the emphasis on rest as well. Such an important aspect that often gets forgotten and then we slip into feeling bad about ourselves for not being able to do more when really the brain is just tapped out for the day. It helps me to think of it like any kind of exercise. Athletes know how essential rest and recovery is for their muscles, and we need to adopt that mindset for the brain as well.
I think as we age, this trick of focus becomes more of a necessity due to limited energy vs. large manual task at hand. I am currently digging out and redesigning and landscaping my foundation plantings. Can I get it all done in one fell swoop? Absolutely not. Can I get up early most days til the heat of the day chases me indoors for a required shower? Yup. I also take copious breaks to admire my progress. It’s been slow but the progress is measurable and pleasant to admire. So, I am of the school that if you write two pages a day, you’ll have 500+ pages at years’ end. In other words, the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.
I like the elephant analogy :)
Okay but there's something I desperately need to know... How on earth do you get yourself to pick work back up once you've taken a break? I find that if I step away for more than a quick bathroom break or to refill my water, my brain procrastinates and procrastinates getting back to work. It just absolutely refuses even though I really want to and I have no idea how to make it happen.
I find that if during the 5 minute break I focus on really not doing anything (not checking my email or social media, no quick phone calls) but really just letting my brain rest, then it's easier to get back to the task. But I hear you that the longer the break the harder it is to get back to it.
Superpowers are often super problems; nothing is all good or all bad, and often things are equally as bad as they are good.
Cookies are super delicious and super bad for you. Rice is less delicious and less bad for you. If you have blood sugar issues, though, even brown rice has a high glycemic index (50), and most white rice (72) is basically Skittles (70).
Focus is a super power but it has drawbacks; there are serious daily limits to how much a biological creature can produce.
Deliberate practice is applying a skill to the edge of your abilities, not merely repeating something without paying extreme attention. According to top performance / excellence researchers like K. Anders Ericsson, deliberate practice (DP) is the only way to significantly improve over time. The limits vary, but for extremely high performers engaging in DP the limits are as low as four solid hours a day.
I’m fiercely interested in excelling at whatever I do (it’s just how my mind works; I don’t feel satisfied unless I’m giving it my all). So deliberate practice is the path for me! But wow—only four hours a day?? And people who do DP that much ALSO have to rest like maniacs to achieve that output. I read Einstein slept ten hours a night!
I do everything in my human capacity to optimize my life, which makes sense since I’m a life coach. I’d sure be a crap one if I didn’t!!
But as I move pieces around on the inner chess board of biohacking / self-coaching / optimizing, I hit this wall over and over and over.
Here’s a ridiculous sequence of events:
1. I try to do a piece of inner work I don’t have the ability to do yet.
2. I over-trigger my nervous system.
3. My firefighters (in Internal Family Systems, the circuit breakers of the nervous system) pop.
4. I fall back into old habits in a harm-reduction way—instead of eating cookies and kombucha (12 g/sugar per bottle) I overeat fruit and drink fizzy, moderately-sugary drinks (6 g/sugar per bottle) and my sleep gets out of whack.
Ugh! Deliberate practice has to take into account one’s capacity to handle more and more difficult tasks. Staying in the orange zone where things are hard, but not too hard, is the goal. I had a two-week fruit, fizzy drink and dysregulated sleep binge because I went into the red zone where things were simply beyond my abilities. I had to take a break and regroup.
Here’s the NEXT ridiculous sequence of events:
1. A long-standing challenge is going to bed on time because I have no wind-down routine at night.
2. I invest thousands of dollars in an at-home Radiant Health low EMF infrared sauna in the hope it would relax me at night to solve this problem.
3. I go through the immense difficulty of getting 470 pounds of wood and glass up three flights of stairs.
4. I start to sauna at night.
5. I have a nightly routine that works!!
6. About four days into my new routine, I feel so clear-headed, rested and on point that I don’t want to stop working before I sauna. I’m a whirling dervish of productivity!
7. I go to bed late paradoxically because I felt so good from going to bed on time for a few days.
8. WTF!!! I have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory!!!
So then I’m under-rested and spend the next few days recovering from overdoing it, and get much less done than usual to pay for the day I got “too much” done.
All this to say, I feel this post Chris!!! Rest and recovery are my kryptonite, but I’ll keep plugging away, one ridiculous sequence of events at a time, until I can rest and recover like a champion.
I have struggled with Pomodoro for the exact reason you list; I would skip breaks if I was "in the flow", why mess with a good thing?
WHY THIS IS SO: Thinking is like an electric connection between brain cells. The gap your thoughts jump across is filled with a gel-like substance that is conductive. But that gel tires after the same synapses are activated over and over, like when writing about a topic. Only rest and distraction will allow the gel to recharge. And the amount of rest will vary by person and intensity of the thinking that exhausted the gel.
Discovering this really helped me accept that those rest periods are not a nice to have, they are a must do.
good wisdom here. Thank you. The older I become the more I need the breaks.
Or maybe I always did but didnt know how much or why
And the more now I value the breaks for a different kind of replenishment. For me
it feels like my soul is being refreshed. I dont take a break in order to be all bright-eyed
and bushy tailed when I go back to the 'doing''.
I take it because my thirst is quenched in the stillness and silence of a break. Even when that break is drying the dishes.
Ive never lived like this before and I am relishing it. Thank you for bringing this insight to me.
“My thirst is quenched in the silence and stillness of a break.” What a lovely way to express this. I love the concept of refreshment (“a place of refreshment, light, and peace”), and this expresses that concept very well.
Thank you for the insight. I had no idea how important and flexible the rest phase can be.
Last week was so intense at work that by Friday I reached my cognitive limit about 5 minutes after I woke up. No Pomodoro timer can save me in those moments 😂 But, after some rest and breaks over the weekend I'm ready to go again.
Focus, recovery and limitations… I have never read explained that way before, but it does make a lot of sense. I can see from this understanding the reason for some of my struggles. Thx Chris for writing.
Wonderful, insightful post! Many of our clients use the Pomodoro technique, but without understanding the neuroscience behind their brains and behaviors and the power of routine and consistency, they can be rendered futile.
Pomodoro works well for me. However I also have a sort of super Pomodoro setting. I just came through several months of extreme pressure juggling both my day job and a stressful evening project. I purposefully took two weeks break and got away from a screen as much as possible but now I'm trying to get back to screen focus my body/brain is still rebelling. The fatigue is unbelievable almost like my burnout from about 20 years ago....
Such a great post. I've been trying to work with my Uni son on this - the benefits of short hyper focus periods and then rest. It should be compulsory teaching in schools 🤣
Ah, I need to really work on the rest bit. I set the timer, but then just ignore it once the first interval is up once I’m in the zone.
This was a great and insightful read thanks for sharing