{"id":202,"date":"2010-01-15T22:27:18","date_gmt":"2010-01-16T04:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/?p=202"},"modified":"2010-01-15T22:27:18","modified_gmt":"2010-01-16T04:27:18","slug":"getting-pomodoros-done-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/2010\/01\/getting-pomodoros-done-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Pomodoros Done #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been experimenting with The Pomodoro Technique<\/a> in combination with Getting Things Done (GTD)<\/a> to maximize productivity at work.\u00a0 I’m finding some very interesting results after about 6 weeks.<\/p>\n

First, working in 30 minute sprints (the hub of The Pomodoro Technique) does not seem to seriously affect the flow state a developer needs to do good work.\u00a0 If I’m deep into work, when the alarm goes off, I just reset it and continue, instead of taking a 5 minute break.\u00a0 This was one of my concerns about working in Pomodoros, that I’d be interrupting myself constantly.\u00a0 At least for me, it doesn’t have a negative effect.\u00a0 On the contrary, I’m not distracting myself with side issues, knowing there’s a potential 5 minute break no more than 25 minutes away, when I can deal with emptying the recycling, getting more coffee, or whatever.<\/p>\n

Next, as the Pomodoro book suggests, it begins to be natural to break work up into 30 minute hunks.\u00a0 I take the first part of every day to organize my Pomodoro list.\u00a0 It gets fed from my GTD Next Actions lists, but often has a granularity somewhere between Next Action and Project. I haven’t yet figured out how to articulate what rules I’m using to build the Pomodoro list, but it is working for me.<\/p>\n

On the not-so-bright side, I’ve discovered that even breaking tasks down into chunks that are theoretically 4 hours (8 pomodoros or half hour sprints) in size, I’m underestimating work consistently by about 20%-25%.\u00a0 (I’m using a spreadsheet based on Joel Spolsky’s Evidence Based Scheduling <\/a>practices to track estimated vs. actual time.)\u00a0 I suppose its a positive that I’m consistent, with only a few outliers each week.<\/p>\n

I’ll be doing more posts on this blended “Getting Pomodoros Done” technique as I continue to work with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been experimenting with The Pomodoro Technique in combination with Getting Things Done (GTD) to maximize productivity at work.\u00a0 I’m finding some very interesting results after about 6 weeks. First, working in 30 minute sprints (the hub of The Pomodoro Technique) does not seem to seriously affect the flow state a developer needs to do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204,"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions\/204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennissherman.com\/dennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}