Detailed Notes
In the latest season of Building Better Developers, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche delve into the essential topic of building better habits. Season 23, episode 2 starts with a deep dive into a powerful productivity method: the Pomodoro Technique. This episode offers valuable insights and practical advice for elevating your focus and productivity.
*Read More*... https://develpreneur.com/pomodoro-technique-boost-your-focus-and-productivity-with-time-blocking/
*The 7-Day Challenge:* Applying the Pomodoro Technique Daily
To help listeners integrate the Pomodoro Technique into their routine, Rob introduces a 7-day challenge. Dedicate at least one Pomodoro session each day to a specific task for the next week. Rob suggests trying the technique for work-related tasks and non-work activities like cleaning, organizing, or even exercise.
This challenge aims to demonstrate the versatility of the Pomodoro Technique and its effectiveness in various aspects of life. By consistently focusing on one task at a time, you can develop stronger habits and experience improved concentration and productivity.
We invite you to join our community and share your coding journey with us. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, there’s always room to learn and grow together. Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes. Together, let’s continue exploring the exciting world of software development.
*Additional Resources*
* Supercharge Your Focus and Productivity: Expert Tips for Success (https://develpreneur.com/supercharge-your-focus-and-productivity-expert-tips-for-success/)
* Finding Balance: The Importance of Pausing and Pivoting in Tech (https://develpreneur.com/finding-balance-the-importance-of-pausing-and-pivoting-in-tech/)
* Essential Habits for Software Developers: Boosting Productivity and Career Growth (https://develpreneur.com/essential-habits-for-software-developers-boosting-productivity-and-career-growth/)
* Time Tracking Solutions – Free and Low Cost (https://develpreneur.com/time-tracking-solutions-free-and-low-cost/)
*Follow-us on:*
* https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOuFN_LhczvGyT2KSItH_g/featured * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://twitter.com/develpreneur * http://linkedin.com/develpreneur
Transcript Text
[Music] well you can and now we are recording because we were on a morning again so we are getting our caffeine going ah good times all right so we are we are doing our building better developers season building better habits Ah that's right building better habits I've forgotten the name already it's been a while it's been like days I slept um so I like move a couple things around I want to turn off my little uh where did that go Focus do not disturb for an hour at least there we go hopefully that will Noto on me all the time uh let's see so building better habits we actually mentioned and I was thinking we could start with the Pomodoro Technique and dig into that a little a little bit um I think that might be a good one one of them that I've got is um actually it's a site that I stumbled across that was really my goal was to get back to my roots a little bit and focus on like improving languages uh some of the coding skills that I've got because it's kind of stuff where it's like you know you get into that rut of all right I'm like you know I'm doing Java and I've been doing the the same Java for a year or two years or 10 years or however long it is and although there's things that change there's also things where you're just like way I always did it that you just sort of it goes back to like having your kitchen sink and your own code repository where you just like start from that and you're off and running as opposed to like really going back and periodically making sure that you are like up to date on all the latest Styles and changes for that language or that environment so there was a couple things I had um there could be a couple of the episodes today or that you know we're we're knocking out here sorry everybody behind the inside baseball there because we usually do a couple of these at a time so we're trying to like line up a couple uh what are you have any thoughts on habits and building habits anything that you wanted to tackle I like the Pomodoro one first because I think that would set this a good action item for the week and then re revisiting code skills or updating code skills periodically I like that one uh as you know I'm in the middle of that right now trying to Pivot from java back into python again and then back into HTML again because I haven't written HTML in what years uh I mean basically most of it's you know boiler plate you just copy paste and then you just tweak it and add your CSS because you're more CSS driven uh yeah yeah I like that the I I had some other ideas but I think those are probably two good ones to kind of lead into this season well what are some of your ideas because I'm I'm happy to take like maybe we can split those over a couple of of EP or you know spread those out yeah so one of the action items I had so we've talked about the kitchen sink app which could lead into the one after uh up you know updating or maintaining your skill sets would be you know updating that that code repository the kitchen same thing like you talked about you kind of touched on that already but the other ones uh I was thinking about too is the working in your business not or working on your business not in your business uh kind of habits uh just start building that because that's something like you've seen some of the conversations we've had this week even I've been we're getting closer to the end of the year so it's like oh all that bookkeeping stuff that we have to do and I'm trying to get my p's and q's in order make sure everything reconciles things of that nature and I thought that would be a good one to do even earlier on because we are near the end of the year even though that's probably a better one towards the end but since we're just where we're at placement wise I think it's like a good one to do now so people are prepared before the end of the year type thing um I like that one um let's do the wow the other one uh and I had one more which was around calendar scheduling uh kind of that work life balance um W I'm sort of torn because of the on your business versus there's also because I'm actually just did was just in a little bit the kitchen syn app kind of mode building out um Talk doing a tech training that was about basically it's about like using that for CSS is building sort of a uh and actually got this from u a discussion actually with Ramsay I think you know him um and the idea of doing sort of building out like when you get into it spe specifically user experience is getting into something where you sort of build out your core look and feel controls in something very simple you know it's basic particularly like you mentioned it's all really CSS driven these days so it's building uh and it always takes me back to the uh the Java tutorial Trails where they had when you got into and I think it still exists out there somewhere when you do the uh user interface stuff is they've got a page that's got all the different controls you know drop downs and multi-line text and all of that stuff and then you can you know you can always click into those and figure out how you create them all the the idea is to have like an HTML page that's got you know your divs and your H1s and twos and threes and blah blah Blas and all that so that you can just and then you slap your CSS ideally your core CSS are as simplistic a CSS as you can and it's like this is what you know this is what the most basic page looks like you can always add to it but it's it's really give you an excuse to have all those controls there to take a look at them you can actually use them it's really great from a um customer point of view as well when you got something like this you can say this is what this is going to look like this little thing that we're talking about or this controller this style this is what it's going to look like and then they can they can get a feel for it it may not be exactly right but it gives them an idea of like here's our basic color schames and this is you know whether we're going to have rounded edges or squared edges or insets or outsets or all of those things that you can do and give them something that it's not just kitchen sink is great for like uh a playground for yourself but it's also great for uh a straw man to start talking to customers about things yeah I think I remember that conversation a couple years ago with him on that where I introduced him to Zen Garden which is essentially that it's a site that gives you hey here's a whole bunch of HTML uh sites and then you can click the style or the theme you want and it literally it's the same HTML but the pages are completely different because it's just applying a CSS layer to uh the core HTML cuz the sites are I think literally nothing but divs divs and IDs and you click it it's a login page you click it it's now this big movie Banner page and it's literally the same HTML it's all style D and that's exactly what I did in that conversation when I was I was doing the little tech training thing is I was like hey this is this is what you do to get you this is for your look and feel for your application however if you want ideas and I pointed them to CSS zenart I was like you can go look here and get some really fantastic ideas of things you can do and this is all within CSS it's really to help to me I see is really a way to help people understand that are getting it that are particularly like middle and back tier developers to be like okay if you want to go do a design if you need to do an interface let's try to do something better than just like raw HTML black and white forms and stuff like that here's some of the stuff that you can do that is gorgeous and you can do it through CSS so which is really what you want to do is you want to be able to have it set up in a situation which you take your CSS file and you apply that and then boom you've got a look and feel and then now that you've built a solid CSS file the next application you can start with that and say okay well here's all the things I need to you know to mess with and if you can use variables which I recommend not doing it because too many things don't recognize those I I thought I was like cool this is going to work great and then too many browsers do not recog recognize the variables properly so I instead had to sort of like have comments to say this is you know the primary colors secondary colors tertiary colors this is a uh you know informative colors these are warning colors and things like that and then I have to do a global search and replace within it but at least it gives you something to to make that next application startup a little bit faster see and I like that because we could then take that episode and then flip it to a testing episode on testing actions like build your sites with a test driven manner because if you're building a website especially if it's a website uh IDs are very important because any action item or any action field really anything on your page needs an ID if you have text label something on there it needs an ID and then we can then write the test to go look at that ID make sure it's rendered make sure that the text or whatever value is supposed to be there um because that saves you a whole lot of time on the back end because you can spin up a like a headless browser say test this and if it comes back oh it failed well you know immediately okay this is where it failed you know say it's one of those where yes it's waiting till the end but really if you're doing web design you kind of have to wait for that or you kind of need to build that into your testing uh it's kind of unit testing but from a deployed perspective does if that makes sense because you know the web page has surrender for you to actually see if it looks right right yeah I like that so let's do we'll do Pomodoro and then we'll talk about sort of like we'll get into the basically to reiterate a little bit apology to everybody that's listening but uh do the like kitchen sink CSS kind of stuff and talk about that a little bit and actually that's I think it may be a little more web app focused but I think it's um I can talk about we can talk about it from a desk desktop application as well but I think will be good um then it is a lead into some of those other things it's like setting yourself up for success and a little bit of it is it actually does go back although I do want to come back to working on your business but it is part of working on your business it's part of like building out templates and doing things so that when you do it you are consistent uh within each of those it's you know standards and uh programming guidelines and such one suggestion too before you cut in take a breath before you just go from talking from this into CU you've done that a couple times and I've had to get a little Fancy with where I'm cutting it uh when you go from okay let's and then you're like IM it's like that is totally intentional that is exactly what I love to do I love to just like be like there we go so that there is just like a boom and we're into it it's fine take my fun away kill Joy I'll do it like there you go well hello and welcome back we are into our new season season number 23 you can't see that but some people can uh little like you know hint there if you're listening to this and you're not seeing it check us out we've got a YouTube channel where you get to see this uh not live but you get to see some video behind it and that may or may not help you we are developing or we are building better developers this is building better habits the season where we have already talked a little bit about we uh security awareness hopefully you took that challenge on and you took a look at some of the tools out there and spend a all the time in your security awareness world and looked at like maybe there's some things that you should change you know some of the common things are like maybe it's time to change that password that you've used for 18 you know or 18 decades maybe uh and or months or however long it is but it's probably too long this episode we're going to get into what we already talked about a little bit the Pomodoro Technique but before we do that we should introduce ourselves my name is Rob Broadhead I am a founder of develop andur building better developers also founder of RB Consulting where we do we help you with your technology challenges we try to make that technology sprawl and bring it all back together and make you you know something nice so you're not like a a technology hoarder where you've got all of these different places you've got all these things stored instead you're bringing it back together and you're using what you have and you're using it to the best ability that you can we use that do that via simplification and automation integration all of these shuns that we use to like bring that all that stuff down into something that's much more useful and it makes it you're more productive and it reduces your cost good thing bad thing uh let's see good thing bad thing this week a good thing oh I've a good thing is and I think I've mentioned this before is that there's a place in town where you can just like you can trade in it's a bookstore effective but you can trade in like books and videos and game systems and all kinds of crap and I'm in a I'm in a simplifying my life mode right now like downsizing stuff trying to get load get rid of a lot of crap that otherwise is going to be sitting in storage for a while and part of that is I've been going through and we have I am a gamer collector of some sorts and I have like I have the and sorry if this is too much for but I have like from an Atari 2600 and stuff like that I've got all sorts of like game boys and Game Boy advances and PS vas and like all the way up to like PS1 and twos and threes and fours and all that kind of stuff and so it's been amazing how much of that stuff I've got that it's just like suddenly there's whole like rooms open basically because I'm taking some of the stuff and being able to donate or not donate but sell it away and then I get some you know some money so I can go back and convert all of these big rooms of cartridges into like a nice old Digital Library things like that so that's been really good it's been a it is a I live in a world where I can take all of my sprawl and I actually get a few bucks out of it after you know at the end of the day and I feel so much better because I have like carloads of stuff and now I come back with just a little you know wallet for their money instead of that carload of stuff so that's a good thing uh bad thing is within that I've got laptops laying around there are Buu laptops that really serve no purpose other than paper weights I could hook them up I could do something if I wanted to go play like a Windows 95 game I guess I could go do that but I'm not going to do anything productive on those machines anymore and there's a few that I've been able to be like all right cool I'm going to reset them and all that but the bad thing is there's a few that I cannot for the life of me like I can reset it 18 different times and it keeps coming back to it it Rees resets everything except the admin user in the lock screen and so it's like it's still got to be this the same person % so there it's just it's a pain in the butt so technology it giveth and it taketh away on the other side we're just going to give it the control over to Michael let him introduce himself hey everyone my name is Michael M I'm one of the co-founders of develop preneur building better uh bit building better developers I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we build software tailor to meet the unique needs of healthc Care Professionals and small to midsize e-commerce businesses if you're looking to build new applications we will help you through software assessments building out those software design documents and then building the software for existing businesses with actual applications they're trying to support we will come in and we can help you build the testing in two your systems to actually help you be able to maintain those Legacy systems and produce newer software good and bad uh good uh making a lot of progress with a couple little uh customers I have were moving things along which is always good you kind of go from that anxiety of are we going to get there to yay we're moving along moving that dial forward uh bad thing I still have gotten absolutely nothing done in the yard the temperatures have finally dropped I'm able to actually get outside and not die from OV exposure to the Sun and my to-do list is going to stack up pretty quickly here so we want to talk about about the Pomodoro Technique now uh Pomodoro is Italian for tomato uh it's p o d o r o and you can go search that wherever you want uh and we'll we'll wrap up here in a little bit we'll talk about what your challenge will be for the week but I want to really talk a little bit about more about what it is and what it's the value it it can bring the idea of this and uh if you go look it's it's really I I forget why they originally said tomato other than I think it had to do with like the timers they were using and some things like that um but the idea by default now you can tweak these things by default the way Pomodoro Technique works is the idea is that you take 25 minutes in a half hour block you take 25 minutes that are ultimately focused no phone no email no nothing you have a task and you're focused on that and that's it don't bounce to another task don't you know your focus at all it is not multitasking it is the opposite of that it is hyper task hyperfocused on your task so if you are coding then you are coding that language that project that task you're not bouncing around to like a log file that's sitting there running in the background and checking on it or you know you're not answering an email you're not out on slack or anything like that you're focused and then at the end of the 25 minutes you get a 5 minute break and then you jump into your next pomodora which is another 25 minutes of work five minute break the whole idea is to get you like really really focus step back at the end of it take your little break take a deep breath go get some you know something to drink or bathroom break or whatever it needs to be and then step right back into it in theory it is you know if you work an 8 hour day you would do you know if you break that up into half hour blocks you would do 16 pomodoros what you will find out if you ever do a full day is you will not get 16 pomodoros time that five minute break is going to often you know switch it'll stretch to maybe seven or 10 or 15 minutes or things like that because this goes back to realizing how much we get interrupted you'll do your 25 minutes and you'll come back for your five like oh I'm going to check my email real quick and then 30 minutes later you're just now wrapping up your emails particularly if you're in something where you've got uh you know team interaction stuff like that you're like oh yeah I gotta I got to resolve this I got to go send this now you could if you did it right you could say I'm going to do a Pomodoro of coding let's say and then I'm going to do an email Pomodoro where I'm going to spend 25 minutes and all I'm going to do is crank through my emails and if I don't you know and this is actually something where there's some interesting value that you've got in these things is if you say I am going to spend 25 minutes on this task and you get it done in 15 minutes then the goal is that saying okay I'm not just I don't just quit after 15 minutes I'm going to do some extra stuff so I actually use this a lot for business development things where it's like I'm going to spend you know 25 minutes focused only on Business Development and I may go into it saying okay the first thing I'm going to do is uh I'm going to tackle invoices let's just say and I'm just random stuff tackle invoices however if I get the invoices done and 15 minutes and I still got 10 left my whole point is like I'm going to tackle invoices and now I'm going to flip over and maybe uh start a blog article or I'm going to go and I usually it's because I've got a whole series of tasks which goes to another idea of the whole GTD getting things done world but I'll have tasks of stuff where it's like oh I've got you know I've got 10 minutes well here I'm G to go take this little five minute task I'm going to go knock this off it maybe crank out an email it may be update a status document somewhere it may be go out to a server and do just a quick like kick off some updates on that to make sure that it's done its latest software updates those kinds of things where you have uh small tasks but you need to get a bunch of those done and you really need to focus on this where you you need to say look I have to put in x amount of work then pomodoros work really well it actually fits really well also with some of the things that we'll talk about uh we've talked about before and we will talk about this season it's the idea of doing uh regular progression on something you know keeping momentum going so for example if you wanted to learn a new language um spoken language programming language whatever it is you could decide I'm going to do a Pomodoro every single day on this and you can then you know research language write little scripts based in that or little apps based on that language you can you know if it's a spoken language you can go through through your if you're using dualingo or one of those things you can you go through those things and then when you're done you're done and it really is nice to have for things when it's like even things that are entertaining so it could be I am going to do a I'm a gamer and I'm going to do a gaming Pomodoro I'm G to spend 25 minutes playing this game and that's it and that actually goes to something I used to use where I was like that was a carrot and stick kind of approach I did I was like okay if I do on when I'm not in my you know my day job when I'm doing my side hustle that was my reward I'd be like okay I'm going to do two hours of work on work whatever my side hustle is and then I give myself a 30 minute reward of okay and then I'm going to go play games or I'm going to go listen music or I'm going to do something that's fun to like balance it out that all work and no play kind of thing so pomodoros are yes it's a it is almost by definition is a Time boxing approach to something where you're saying I'm going to do x amount of time on this but it also Al breaks it up to say I'm going to focus and then I'm going to step back I'm going to focus I'm going to step back I mentioned the default default is 25 and five a lot of people shift it so there's a lot of people and that will do like 45 and 15 maybe just because then it still Falls in an hour or they could I mean you could just do uh 50 and 10 you could just basically like double it up and just keep your focus for that 50 minutes that actually I find the 4515 works really really well in the business world because we'll have meetings often that are you know half hour an hour and usually on the hour and so what you can do is you can put a block in your calendar it's another thing we'll talk about it scheduling things like that but you could put a block in your calendar that I am going to work on X you can do this on side hustle stuff as well things like that it's like I'm going to spend an hour on this and within that hour what you do is you start off your Pomodoro and a lot of times it works well if it's if it's a task like this because first five minutes you're prepping for the task you spend 45 minutes on your you know in the pomidor really focused on it and then you spend a few minutes you know that 10 minutes sort of wrapping it up cleaning it up and then you move on to your next task there's a lot of different ways you can you can leverage Pomodoro now before we get into the challenge for this time I'm going to pick pitch this over to Michael and because I know you have you have also done this in the past and have you know obviously some of the same and some different experiences as well so I want to get some of your thoughts and maybe some of the ways that you have leveraged it sure uh I'm actually going to start out slightly different so you've kind of laid in all the groundwork in that of the uh amadoro techniques I never say this right uh that's one habit I have to break it's pronouncing words the right way but I digress one of the problems I had and I still have sometimes with the Pomodoro Technique is not over like trying to do too much within that time frame it's like okay my list is too broad or I have too many items on my list and I'm trying to do too much so one of the issues I found that I've had to kind of tailor over the years is this is a Tas driven approach is you were trying to get things done within a block of time however if you are a micromanager or you just have a lot of things to do you'll just sit down and the first thing you want to do is make a list so you start writing down all the things you have to do well as you write that list it's like it it just keeps growing the problem with that is if you make a list that's too broad too long if you try to do all that in a single day you're not going to do it you're going to get frustrated you're going to get burned out and you're not going to be able to really keep it within the uh padaro um model the other thing is the idea that they have I think with that with the actual timer is you kind of want that kitchen timer because if you have the little digital timers it's so easy to ignore those or you forget about them or they get hidden in the background so having that little kitchen timer on your desk and it makes that Ding it's like oh okay I definitely need to take a break and step back so as you're building out that list one of the cool things I found over time was just take an 8 by11 sheet of paper fold it till it's about the size of an index card then in normal handwriting write down a list of tasks that you need to get done for the day and you can do this daily uh so you have your daily tasks but then you have those other business tasks like Rob mentioned like checking your email or following up with teams or daily meetings so that you could put in another on another like flip it over write it on the other side then what you do is you put these things in into like a task manager and you got to be careful about task managers because you can overwhelm them again but as you're going through this block out okay this task is going to be 25 minutes Market say okay in between that I want to take the 15minute break or the five minute break put the break in your task go for a walk check email bio break it may sound strange but you kind of want to micromanage it a little bit at first till you get comfortable doing this because if not you're going to be a little bit overwhelmed and you're just going to kind of get stuck in the heads down mode it's like okay I'm working on this Tas stop oh but I'm not done with this task so I need to keep working on this task and yes you can but take that break take that five minute break go do something else and then come back and jump right back into it and kind of run with it some more so those are just some of the techniques and things I've learned over time that you just have to be careful with this technique it is very useful and it's very helpful es especially for those of us that are a little bit too UM multitask or so-called multitask driven where we're doing too many tasks at once I used to pride myself on being a very good multitasker until I realized that really multi asking is a lie and I've said this before in other conversations if you are spreading your attention across multiple things you're not paying enough attention to actually get the job done so it's going to take you longer to actually get that test done so you're better off just saying hey wait just a minute let me finish this spend the time finish that email finish that phone call Finish what it is you're working on and if you need to add a placeholder add a little note where you're at when you're done turn finish your conversation ation with the person you have answer the phone and then pick it back up where you left off and run with it because if you stop something Midstream and then you can't get back to that for a day or two you're going to be like what the heck was I doing and now you got to spend all that uh time get kind of ramping back up which is something we haven't really talked about but we can come back to that later is your mindset you want to make sure that you're focused that you stay focused and stay on task that's really kind of my take on this whole technique that really is the I think that focus is really the the key to all of this and it is it is one of those it needs to be um serial it needs to be a Serial process so if you've got a list if you're going to step into and that's I'm glad you brought that up because that is something as I mentioned it's like you could come into a Pomodoro and have maybe a list of three tasks that you want to tackle within that that time snippet the goal is but the goal is you need to do task one task two task three you do not bounce around to them you get very focused you get the first one start it get it complete then you move on to the next one if you don't get to the end that's okay that spills to some other time the goal is you need to focus one at a time and walk your way through it and focus is so much the the key word here is the focus of this idea is that you're not getting distracted Ed by you know texts and emails and chat rooms and all that kind of other stuff that can pop up and that leads us to the challenge for the week and I just started I was sort of playing around with this the last week and I hadn't done this in a while and so that was why it like there's some key things going to bring out that are literally the issues that I ran into so in starting out the challenge for this is for the next five workday and honestly I think it's actually better for the next seven days each day do one Pomodoro you don't have to do two three eight do one pick a Pomodoro pick a task or a couple of tasks and just try it you can you can Google or Bing or whatever your favorite search engine pomodora there are all kinds of you there's timers everywhere there's descriptions that's everywhere there are web pages out there that have really nice little things that will you know do your do all your timers and they've got graphics and all that kind of stuff so whatever works for you and I recommend that if it doesn't work the first day make some changes to it the next day around but the goal is is just do one is to your goal to this Mission should you choose to accept it is that you do 25 minutes and you can change if you want to do you know whatever your time frame is but you do 25 minutes of that focused work and and you're going to run into things which I ran into where I did that but I had not set stuff up enough so I had emails come through I had texts come through I had all these different things like text are really tough because I'm sitting there on working on my computer and my phone's over on the side and it'll start doing its little like hey pay attention pay attention I'm over here and so you got to like put your phone away when I did this regularly I did this for a while many years ago one of the things I did is I put my phone in another room I didn't even I had no phone there I made sure there was no way to get a hold of me or distract me from it and this includes I said the next seven days I think it is going to be very valuable for you to not only do a work rated St thing but try something that is not necessarily work rated so it may be things like I'm going to do a Pomodoro where I clean a bathroom or I'm cleaning the kitchen or I'm organizing my office or whatever it is to see that to get you just sort of I feel that that there is value in Focus we talk so much about like you know and we are like the world screams at us with all these different ways to get a hold of us and you got to talk to me right now and I got to do this I got to have 18 conversations at a time and you know how much you get ticked off when you're on a support on chat and you know that person on the other side of that is supporting 18 people at the same time they're really distracted or if you really want to do this go out with your significant other and while you're talking to them over dinner be looking at your phone the whole time see how well that works out for you so we don't like it when people have their their uh attention split and so we need to there's a reason for that it's because if your attention is split you're not giving all of your focus to the tasks at hand so let's try doing that with our work and that's I said extend it seven days and pick something that's even not a work thing because I think this will help you do a better job of it is that you'll start realizing where focus and batching tasks together and some of those things really do bring value because it really comes down to if you want to be more productive it's not about doing more things at the same time it's finding a way to reduce the natural cost of Switching gears from one thing to another if you want a purely mechanical example of it if you go to car drivers and they're like going they're flying through all their different gears one of the things is the faster they can move from Gear 1 to two to three to four to 5 to six to seven the better they're that's like that's all process Improvement there they're still going to accelerate probably at a roughly the same rate things like that but that kachunk kachunk kach chunk while you're changing gears that time they can reduce so there's things like that that that's where this has become valuable so the challenge is next seven days once a day at least least and I would say just start with just one don't don't push it too much do one Pomodoro each day and then let us know your thoughts especially as you get into that day six and day seven and after you've completed it see if you want to continue or I would love to hear feedback on this like where did you find uh it was a challenge where did you find it worked really well what are so and H part of it is like what kinds of tasks did you choose now before we wrap this one up because normally we leave bonus material for um those that are out on the you in the YouTube world in the visual world I do want to throw one extra bonus thought as you're going into this even though we're going to do one each day in our challenge one of the things you can do when you decide to put several pomodoros together it does not you do not have to work break work break what you can do is you can do work break and then keep the keep that into the break for the next section so that you're basically ling up your breakes so instead of 255 255 you can do 2510 2510 and do that as your breaks and I I mentioned that because it was something Michael said that triggered me had forgotten about during the covid years it felt like years I guess it was like a year or something like that I was in a situation where I was I was sort of doing Pomodoro stuff but I was doing and I wasn't doing as it officially but I would do 45 minutes on 15 minutes off and it was just something that worked out really well for my schedule because I wanted to keep focused because there was like it was sometimes hard to keep focused on the things I needed to get done but one of the things I would do towards the middle of the day after a couple of pomodoros is I would do 45 minutes and then I would have a half hour before my next 45 minute break during that half hour I would go do a a mile walk basically so it would be I could take that half hour I could go spend you know depending on how I did it and whether it was a walk or jog or whatever I could spend 15 20 25 minutes getting some exercise getting away from my desk and it was a great way to recharge and then come back into that next 45 minute Focus you could do the same thing if you want if you're like a power Napper you could go take that you know that time and go take a you know 15-minute power nap you could go get lunch break there's things you can do if you shift that around so that's your uh your bonus for this one and once again love to hear what your feedback is how does this work for you how does it not work for you because these are the kinds of things that we all you know try to find ways to do stuff better and we don't always have that we don't like out of the gate we don't always have the best approach so I think hearing from others will help us quite a bit you can do that by shooting an email to info@ developer.com you can leave comments whether this is podcast wherever you see podcast or out on the YouTube uh develop andur Channel you can leave comments there those are probably some of the best places to do it because then you can share that with everybody and get some feedback and get some of the you know the community around this and figure out how these things work for you you can also contact us we've got a contact form on develop or.com uh you can go out to Twitter we are develop andur you may want to you know throw something there and just do like a little retweets there to just let us know how you're doing uh we'll say hash Pomodoro because I know there's already a hashtag out there and a lot of people uh follow that in the community so that may help that being said big breath wrap this one up I don't think it took us 25 minutes We prob we should do that as a as an episode one time is do our little Pomodoro episode that being said go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time all right bonus material from you because I already threw mine out there so the only additional bonus material I'll add is in addition to the timer that we talked about look at tools to turn off the distractions so like if you you saw the pre-episode bonus material Rob was sitting there trying to turn off all his little beeps and dings and messages use the tools you have on your devices Microsoft has ways of turning things off Apple especially what's really cool about that is if all your devices are sync to the same account if you turn focus on on one it turns that on for all your devices so like your watch your phone so all things of that nature but try to limit what you allow for those exceptions the more you can block it the better it is all right well that will wrap this one up I want to thank you guys as always for coming out here like I said this is a perfect place for you leave some comments about your Pomodoro uh experiences and and suggestions recommendations and things like that because I think this is a this does go back to we've talked so much about like incremental steady progress and Pomodoro just one a day kind of thing is like perfect for that you can even set it I used to do 15 minutes and we've we've done our uh so many of our tutorials are in these little 15 minute chunks you could easily do a 15minute Pomodoro every morning I'm going to spend just set your timer you don't have to worry about the break afterwards or you could do like if you're doing two things do it 15 minutes five minute break 15 minutes and then you're off and doing your day and it took you a little over a half hour and you had two things probably that you were progressing on and as just a sort of like personal experience I had a period for about a couple of years I had four of them I did and I didn't I didn't do breaks I did 15 15 15 15 it did usually took me because I was Switching gears took me a couple minutes between each one during that time I was working on a business I was building a software application I was uh learning a foreign language and uh I wish I could remember the other one was um shoot I forget what the other one I think oh the other one was just um daily Financial kind of stuff was just like making sure that I had everything all my ducks in a row paying bills and stuff like that so I didn't wait till the end of the week to get it or the end of you know two weeks as I was just like oh I was doing that so it was like a it was an early start I'd you know start my morning and that was like the first hour of my day was cranking through those things but it worked really well it was amazing how much progress I made as I got into the you know weeks added up and months added up and the next day I know I'd like I had built an application I'd learned a foreign language all that kind of stuff so that being said we will wrap this one up go out there and have yourself a great one and we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
well you
can and now we are recording because we
were on a morning again so we are
getting our caffeine
going ah good times all right so we
are we are doing our building better
developers season building better habits
Ah that's right building better habits
I've forgotten the name already it's
been a while it's been like days I slept
um so I like move a couple things around
I want to turn off my
little uh where did that go Focus do not
disturb for an hour at least there we
go hopefully that will Noto on me all
the
time uh let's see so building better
habits we actually mentioned and I was
thinking we could start with the
Pomodoro Technique and dig into that a
little a little bit um I think that
might be a good
one one of them that I've
got is um actually it's a site that I
stumbled across that was really my goal
was to get back to my roots a little bit
and focus on like improving languages uh
some of the coding skills that I've got
because it's kind of stuff where it's
like you know you get into that
rut of all right I'm like you know I'm
doing Java and I've been doing the the
same Java for a year or two years or 10
years or however long it is and although
there's things that change there's also
things where you're just like way I
always did it that you just sort of it
goes back to like having your kitchen
sink and your own code repository where
you just like start from
that and you're off and running as
opposed to like really going back and
periodically making sure that you are
like up to date on all the latest Styles
and changes for that language or that
environment so there was a couple things
I had
um there could be a couple of the
episodes today or that you know we're
we're knocking out here sorry everybody
behind the inside baseball there because
we usually do a couple of these at a
time so we're trying to like line up a
couple uh what are you have any thoughts
on habits and building habits anything
that you wanted to tackle I like the
Pomodoro one first because I think that
would set this a good action item for
the
week and
then re revisiting code skills or
updating code skills periodically I like
that
one uh as you know I'm in the middle of
that right now trying to Pivot from java
back into python again and then back
into HTML again because I haven't
written HTML in what years uh I mean
basically most of it's you know boiler
plate you just copy paste and then you
just tweak it and add your CSS because
you're more CSS driven uh yeah
yeah I like that the I I had some other
ideas but I think those are probably two
good ones to kind of lead into this
season well what are some of your ideas
because I'm I'm happy to take like maybe
we can split those over a couple of of
EP or you know spread those out yeah so
one of the action items I had so we've
talked about the kitchen sink app which
could lead into the one after uh up you
know updating or maintaining your skill
sets would be you know updating that
that code repository the kitchen same
thing like you talked about you kind of
touched on that already but the other
ones uh I was thinking about too is the
working in your business not or working
on your business not in your business uh
kind of habits uh just start building
that because that's
something like you've seen some of the
conversations we've had this week even
I've been we're getting closer to the
end of the year so it's like oh all that
bookkeeping stuff that we have to do and
I'm trying to get my p's and q's in
order make sure everything reconciles
things of that nature and I thought that
would be a good one to do even earlier
on because we are near the end of the
year even though that's probably a
better one towards the end but since
we're just where we're at placement wise
I think it's like a good one to do now
so people are prepared before the end of
the year type thing
um I like that one um let's do the wow
the other one uh and I had one more
which was around calendar
scheduling uh kind of that work life
balance um W I'm sort of torn because of
the on your business versus there's also
because I'm actually just did was just
in a little bit the kitchen syn app kind
of mode building out
um Talk doing a tech training that was
about basically it's about like using
that for CSS is building sort of a uh
and actually got this from u a
discussion actually with Ramsay I think
you know him um and the idea of
doing sort of building out like when you
get into it spe specifically user
experience is getting into something
where you sort of build out your core
look and feel controls in something very
simple you know it's basic particularly
like you mentioned it's all really CSS
driven these days so it's
building uh and it always takes me back
to the uh the Java tutorial Trails where
they had when you got into and I think
it still exists out there somewhere when
you do the uh user interface stuff is
they've got a page that's got all the
different controls you know drop downs
and multi-line text and all of that
stuff and then you can you know you can
always click into those and figure out
how you create them all the the idea is
to have like an HTML page that's got you
know your divs and your H1s and twos and
threes and blah blah Blas and all that
so that you can just and then you slap
your CSS ideally your core CSS are as
simplistic a CSS as you can and it's
like this is what you know this is what
the most basic page looks like you can
always add to it but it's it's really
give you an excuse to have all those
controls there to take a look at them
you can actually use them it's really
great from a um customer point of view
as well when you got something like this
you can say this is what this is going
to look like this little thing that
we're talking about or this controller
this style this is what it's going to
look like and then they can they can get
a feel for it it may not be exactly
right but it gives them an idea of like
here's our basic color schames and this
is you know whether we're going to have
rounded edges or squared edges or insets
or outsets or all of those things that
you can do and give them something that
it's not just kitchen sink is great for
like uh a playground for yourself but
it's also great for uh a straw man to
start talking to customers about things
yeah I think I remember that
conversation a couple years ago with him
on that where I introduced him to Zen
Garden which is essentially that it's a
site that gives you hey here's a whole
bunch of
HTML uh sites and then you can click the
style or the theme you want and it
literally it's the same HTML but the
pages are completely different because
it's just applying a CSS layer to uh the
core HTML cuz the sites are I think
literally nothing but divs divs and IDs
and you click it it's a login page you
click it it's now this big movie Banner
page and it's literally the same HTML
it's all style D and that's exactly what
I did in that conversation when I was I
was doing the little tech training thing
is I was like hey this is this is what
you do to get you this is for your look
and feel for your application however if
you want
ideas and I pointed them to CSS zenart I
was like you can go look here and get
some really fantastic ideas of things
you can do and this is all within CSS
it's really to help to me I see is
really a way to help people understand
that are getting it that are
particularly like middle and back tier
developers to be like okay if you want
to go do a design if you need to do an
interface let's try to do something
better than just like raw HTML black and
white forms and stuff like that here's
some of the stuff that you can do that
is gorgeous and you can do it through
CSS so which is really what you want to
do is you want to be able to have it set
up in a situation which you take your
CSS file and you apply that and then
boom you've got a look and feel and then
now that you've built a solid CSS file
the next application you can start with
that and say okay well here's all the
things I need to you know to mess with
and if you can use variables which I
recommend not doing it because too many
things don't recognize those I I thought
I was like cool this is going to work
great and then too many browsers do not
recog recognize the variables properly
so I instead had to sort of like have
comments to say this is you know the
primary colors secondary colors tertiary
colors this is a uh you know informative
colors these are warning colors and
things like that and then I have to do a
global search and replace within it but
at least it gives you something to to
make that next application startup a
little bit faster see and I like that
because we could then take that
episode and then flip it to a testing
episode on testing actions like build
your sites with a test driven manner
because if you're building a website
especially if it's a
website uh IDs are very important
because any action item or any action
field really anything on your page needs
an ID if you have text label something
on there it needs an ID and then we can
then write the test to go look at that
ID make sure it's rendered make sure
that the text or whatever value is
supposed to be there um because that
saves you a whole lot of time on the
back end because you can spin up a like
a headless browser say test this and if
it comes back oh it failed well you know
immediately okay this is where it failed
you know say it's one of those where yes
it's waiting till the end but really if
you're doing web design you kind of have
to wait for that or you kind of need to
build that into your testing uh it's
kind of unit testing but from a deployed
perspective does if that makes sense
because you know the web page has
surrender for you to actually see if it
looks right
right yeah I like that so let's
do we'll do Pomodoro and then we'll talk
about sort of like we'll get into the
basically to reiterate a little bit
apology to everybody that's listening
but uh do the like kitchen sink CSS kind
of stuff and talk about that a little
bit and actually that's I think it may
be a little more web app focused but I
think it's um I can talk about we can
talk about it from a desk desktop
application as well but I think will be
good um then it is a lead into some of
those other things it's like setting
yourself up for
success and a little bit of it is it
actually does go back although I do want
to come back to working on your business
but it is part of working on your
business it's part of like building out
templates and doing things so that when
you do it you are consistent uh within
each of those it's you know standards
and uh programming guidelines and such
one suggestion too before you cut in
take a breath before you just go from
talking from this into CU you've done
that a couple times and I've had to get
a little Fancy with where I'm cutting it
uh when you go from okay let's and then
you're like IM it's like that is totally
intentional that is exactly what I love
to
do I love to just like be like there we
go so that there is just like a boom and
we're into it it's fine take my fun away
kill
Joy I'll do it
like there you go
well hello and welcome back we are into
our new season season number 23 you
can't see that but some people can uh
little like you know hint there if
you're listening to this and you're not
seeing it check us out we've got a
YouTube channel where you get to see
this uh not live but you get to see some
video behind it and that may or may not
help you we are developing or we are
building better developers this is
building better habits the season where
we have already talked a little bit
about we uh security awareness hopefully
you took that challenge on and you took
a look at some of the tools out there
and spend a all the time in your
security awareness world and looked at
like maybe there's some things that you
should change you know some of the
common things are like maybe it's time
to change that password that you've used
for 18 you know or 18 decades maybe uh
and or months or however long it is but
it's probably too long this episode
we're going to get into what we already
talked about a little bit the Pomodoro
Technique but before we do that we
should introduce ourselves my name is
Rob Broadhead I am a founder of develop
andur building better developers also
founder of RB Consulting where we do we
help you with your technology challenges
we try to make that technology sprawl
and bring it all back together and make
you you know something nice so you're
not like a a technology hoarder where
you've got all of these different places
you've got all these things stored
instead you're bringing it back together
and you're using what you have and
you're using it to the best ability that
you can we use that do that via
simplification and automation
integration all of these shuns that we
use to like bring that all that stuff
down into something that's much more
useful and it makes it you're more
productive and it reduces your cost good
thing bad thing uh let's see good thing
bad thing this week a good thing oh I've
a good thing is and I think I've
mentioned this before is that there's a
place in town where you can just like
you can trade in it's a bookstore
effective but you can trade in like
books and videos and game systems and
all kinds of crap and I'm in a I'm in a
simplifying my life mode right now like
downsizing stuff trying to get load get
rid of a lot of crap that otherwise is
going to be sitting in storage for a
while and part of that is I've been
going through and we have I am a gamer
collector of some sorts and I have like
I have the and sorry if this is too much
for but I have like from an Atari 2600
and stuff like that I've got all sorts
of like game boys and Game Boy advances
and PS vas and like all the way up to
like PS1 and twos and threes and fours
and all that kind of stuff and so it's
been amazing how much of that stuff I've
got that it's just like suddenly there's
whole like rooms open basically because
I'm taking some of the stuff and being
able to donate or not donate but sell it
away and then I get some you know some
money so I can go back and convert all
of these big rooms of cartridges into
like a nice old Digital Library things
like that so that's been really good
it's been a it is a I live in a world
where I can take all of my sprawl and I
actually get a few bucks out of it after
you know at the end of the day and I
feel so much better because I have like
carloads of stuff and now I come back
with just a little you know wallet for
their money instead of that carload of
stuff so that's a good thing uh bad
thing is within
that I've got laptops laying around
there are Buu laptops that really serve
no purpose other than paper weights I
could hook them up I could do something
if I wanted to go play like a Windows 95
game I guess I could go do that but I'm
not going to do anything productive on
those machines anymore and there's a few
that I've been able to be like all right
cool I'm going to reset them and all
that but the bad thing is there's a few
that I cannot for the life of me like I
can reset it 18 different times and it
keeps coming back to it it Rees resets
everything except the admin user in the
lock screen and so it's like it's still
got to be this the same person % so
there it's just it's a pain in the butt
so technology it giveth and it taketh
away on the other side we're just going
to give it the control over to Michael
let him introduce
himself hey everyone my name is Michael
M I'm one of the co-founders of develop
preneur building better uh bit building
better developers I'm also the founder
of Envision QA where we build software
tailor to meet the unique needs of
healthc Care Professionals and small to
midsize e-commerce businesses if you're
looking to build new applications we
will help you through software
assessments building out those software
design documents and then building the
software for existing businesses with
actual applications they're trying to
support we will come in and we can help
you build the testing in two your
systems to actually help you be able to
maintain those Legacy systems and
produce newer software good and bad uh
good uh making a lot of progress with a
couple little
uh customers I have were moving things
along which is always good you kind of
go from that anxiety of are we going to
get there to yay we're moving along
moving that dial forward uh bad thing I
still have gotten absolutely nothing
done in the yard the temperatures have
finally dropped I'm able to actually get
outside and not die from OV exposure to
the Sun and my to-do list is going to
stack up pretty quickly
here so we want to talk about about the
Pomodoro Technique now uh Pomodoro is
Italian for tomato uh it's p o d o r o
and you can go search that wherever you
want uh and we'll we'll wrap up here in
a little bit we'll talk about what your
challenge will be for the week but I
want to really talk a little bit about
more about what it is and what it's the
value it it can
bring the idea of this and uh if you go
look it's it's really I I forget why
they originally said tomato other than I
think it had to do with like the timers
they were using and some things like
that um but the idea by default now you
can tweak these things by default the
way Pomodoro Technique works is the idea
is that you take 25 minutes in a half
hour block you take 25 minutes that are
ultimately focused no phone no email no
nothing you have a task and you're
focused on that and that's it don't
bounce to another task don't you know
your focus at all it is not multitasking
it is the opposite of that it is hyper
task hyperfocused on your task so if you
are coding then you are coding that
language that project that task you're
not bouncing around to like a log file
that's sitting there running in the
background and checking on it or you
know you're not answering an email
you're not out on slack or anything like
that you're focused and then at the end
of the 25 minutes you get a 5 minute
break and then you jump into your next
pomodora which is another 25 minutes of
work five minute break the whole idea is
to get you like really really
focus step back at the end of it take
your little break take a deep breath go
get some you know something to drink or
bathroom break or whatever it needs to
be and then step right back into
it in theory it is you know if you work
an 8 hour day you would do you know if
you break that up into half hour blocks
you would do 16 pomodoros
what you will find out if you ever do a
full day is you will not get 16
pomodoros time that five minute break is
going to often you know switch it'll
stretch to maybe seven or 10 or 15
minutes or things like that because this
goes back to realizing how much we get
interrupted you'll do your 25 minutes
and you'll come back for your five like
oh I'm going to check my email real
quick and then 30 minutes later you're
just now wrapping up your emails
particularly if you're in something
where you've got uh you know team
interaction stuff like that you're like
oh yeah I gotta I got to resolve this I
got to go send this now you could if you
did it right you could say I'm going to
do a Pomodoro of coding let's say and
then I'm going to do an email Pomodoro
where I'm going to spend 25 minutes and
all I'm going to do is crank through my
emails and if I don't you know and this
is actually something where there's some
interesting value that you've got in
these things is if you say I am going to
spend 25 minutes on this task
and you get it done in 15 minutes then
the goal is that saying okay I'm not
just I don't just quit after 15 minutes
I'm going to do some extra stuff so I
actually use this a lot for business
development things where it's like I'm
going to spend you know 25 minutes
focused only on Business Development and
I may go into it saying okay the first
thing I'm going to do is uh I'm going to
tackle invoices let's just say and I'm
just random stuff tackle invoices
however if I get the invoices done and
15 minutes and I still got 10 left my
whole point is like I'm going to tackle
invoices and now I'm going to flip over
and maybe uh start a blog article or I'm
going to go and I usually it's because
I've got a whole series of tasks which
goes to another idea of the whole GTD
getting things done world but I'll have
tasks of stuff where it's like oh I've
got you know I've got 10 minutes well
here I'm G to go take this little five
minute task I'm going to go knock this
off it maybe crank out an email it may
be update a status document somewhere it
may be go out to a server and do just a
quick like kick off some updates on that
to make sure that it's done its latest
software updates those kinds of
things where you have uh small tasks but
you need to get a bunch of those done
and you really need to focus on this
where you you need to say look I have to
put in x amount of work then pomodoros
work really well it actually fits really
well also with some of the things that
we'll talk about uh we've talked about
before and we will talk about this
season it's the idea of doing uh regular
progression on something you know
keeping momentum going so for example if
you wanted to learn a new language um
spoken language programming language
whatever it is you could decide I'm
going to do a Pomodoro every single day
on this and you can then you know
research language write little scripts
based in that or little apps based on
that language you can you know if it's a
spoken language you can go through
through your if you're using dualingo or
one of those things you can you go
through those things and then when
you're done you're done and it really is
nice to have for things when it's like
even things that are entertaining so it
could be I am going to do a I'm a gamer
and I'm going to do a gaming Pomodoro
I'm G to spend 25 minutes playing this
game and that's it and that actually
goes to something I used to use where I
was like that was a carrot and stick
kind of approach I did I was like okay
if I do on when I'm not in my you know
my day job when I'm doing my side hustle
that was my reward I'd be like okay I'm
going to do two hours of work on work
whatever my side hustle is and then I
give myself a 30 minute reward of okay
and then I'm going to go play games or
I'm going to go listen music or I'm
going to do something that's fun to like
balance it out that all work and no play
kind of thing so pomodoros are yes it's
a it is almost by definition is a Time
boxing approach to something where
you're saying I'm going to do x amount
of time on this but it also Al breaks it
up to say I'm going to focus and then
I'm going to step back I'm going to
focus I'm going to step back I mentioned
the default default is 25 and five a lot
of people shift it so there's a lot of
people and that will do like 45 and 15
maybe just because then it still Falls
in an hour or they could I mean you
could just do uh 50 and 10 you could
just basically like double it up and
just keep your focus for that 50 minutes
that actually I find the 4515 works
really really well in the business world
because we'll have meetings often that
are you know half hour an hour and
usually on the hour and so what you can
do is you can put a block in your
calendar it's another thing we'll talk
about it scheduling things like that but
you could put a block in your calendar
that I am going to work on X you can do
this on side hustle stuff as well things
like that it's like I'm going to spend
an hour on this and within that hour
what you do is you start off your
Pomodoro and a lot of times it works
well if it's if it's a task like this
because first five minutes you're
prepping for the task you spend 45
minutes on your you know in the pomidor
really focused on it and then you spend
a few minutes you know that 10 minutes
sort of wrapping it up cleaning it up
and then you move on to your next task
there's a lot of different ways you can
you can leverage Pomodoro now before we
get into the challenge for this time I'm
going to pick pitch this over to Michael
and because I know you have you have
also done this in the past and have you
know obviously some of the same and some
different experiences as well so I want
to get some of your thoughts and maybe
some of the ways that you have leveraged
it
sure uh I'm actually going to start out
slightly different so you've kind of
laid in all the groundwork in that of
the uh amadoro techniques I never say
this right uh that's one habit I have to
break
it's pronouncing words the right way but
I digress one of the problems I had and
I still have sometimes with the Pomodoro
Technique is not over like trying to do
too much within that time frame it's
like okay my list is too broad or I have
too many items on my list and I'm trying
to do too much so one of the issues I
found that I've had to kind of tailor
over the years is this is a Tas driven
approach is you were trying to get
things done within a block of
time however if you
are a micromanager or you just have a
lot of things to do you'll just sit down
and the first thing you want to do is
make a list so you start writing down
all the things you have to do well as
you write that list it's like it it just
keeps growing the problem with that is
if you make a list that's too broad too
long if you try to do all that in a
single day you're not going to do it
you're going to get frustrated you're
going to get burned out and you're not
going to be able to really keep it
within the uh
padaro um model the other thing is the
idea that they have I think with that
with the actual timer is you kind of
want that kitchen timer because if you
have the little digital timers it's so
easy to ignore those or you forget about
them or they get hidden in the
background so having that little kitchen
timer on your desk and it makes that
Ding it's like oh okay I definitely need
to take a break and step
back so as you're building out that list
one of the cool things I found over time
was just take an 8 by11 sheet of paper
fold it till it's about the size of an
index card then in normal
handwriting write down a list of tasks
that you need to get done for the day
and you can do this daily uh so you have
your daily tasks but then you have those
other business tasks like Rob mentioned
like checking your email or following up
with teams or daily meetings so that you
could put in another on another like
flip it over write it on the other side
then what you do is you put these things
in into like a task manager and you got
to be careful about task managers
because you can overwhelm them again but
as you're going through this block out
okay this task is going to be 25 minutes
Market say okay in between that I want
to take the 15minute break or the five
minute break put the break in your task
go for a walk check email bio
break it may sound strange but you kind
of want to micromanage it a little bit
at first till you get comfortable doing
this because if not you're going to
be a little bit overwhelmed and you're
just going to kind of get stuck in the
heads down mode it's like okay I'm
working on this Tas stop oh but I'm not
done with this task so I need to keep
working on this task and yes you can but
take that break take that five minute
break go do something else and then come
back and jump right back into it and
kind of run with it some more so those
are just some of the techniques and
things I've learned over time that you
just have to be careful with this
technique it is very useful and it's
very helpful es especially for those of
us that are a little bit too UM
multitask or so-called multitask driven
where we're doing too many tasks at
once I used to pride myself on being a
very good multitasker until I realized
that really multi asking is a lie and
I've said this before in other
conversations if you are spreading your
attention across multiple things you're
not paying enough attention to actually
get the job done so it's going to take
you longer to actually get that test
done so you're better off just saying
hey wait just a minute let me finish
this spend the time finish that email
finish that phone call Finish what it is
you're working on and if you need to add
a placeholder add a little note where
you're at when you're done turn finish
your conversation ation with the person
you have answer the phone and then pick
it back up where you left off and run
with it because if you stop something
Midstream and then you can't get back to
that for a day or two you're going to be
like what the heck was I doing and now
you got to spend all that uh time get
kind of ramping back up which is
something we haven't really talked about
but we can come back to that later is
your mindset you want to make sure that
you're focused that you stay focused and
stay on task that's really kind of my
take on this whole
technique that really is the I think
that focus is really the the key to all
of this and it is it is one of those it
needs to be um serial it needs to be a
Serial process so if you've got a list
if you're going to step into and that's
I'm glad you brought that up because
that is something as I mentioned it's
like you could come into a Pomodoro and
have maybe a list of three tasks that
you want to tackle within that that time
snippet
the goal is but the goal is you need to
do task one task two task three you do
not bounce around to them you get very
focused you get the first one start it
get it complete then you move on to the
next one if you don't get to the end
that's okay that spills to some other
time the goal is you need to focus one
at a time and walk your way through it
and focus is so much the the key word
here is the focus of this idea is that
you're not getting distracted Ed by you
know texts and emails and chat rooms and
all that kind of other stuff that can
pop
up and that leads us to the challenge
for the week and I just started I was
sort of playing around with this the
last week and I hadn't done this in a
while and so that was why it like
there's some key things going to bring
out that are literally the issues that I
ran
into so in starting out the challenge
for this is for the next five workday
and honestly I think it's actually
better for the next seven days each day
do one Pomodoro you don't have to do two
three eight do one pick a Pomodoro pick
a task or a couple of tasks and just try
it you can you can Google or Bing or
whatever your favorite search engine
pomodora there are all kinds of you
there's timers everywhere there's
descriptions that's everywhere there are
web pages out there that have really
nice little things that will you know do
your do all your timers and they've got
graphics and all that kind of stuff so
whatever works for you and I recommend
that if it doesn't work the first day
make some changes to it the next day
around but the goal is is just do one is
to your goal to this Mission should you
choose to accept it is that you do 25
minutes and you can change if you want
to do you know whatever your time frame
is but you do 25 minutes of that focused
work and and you're going to run into
things which I ran into where I did that
but I had not set stuff up enough so I
had emails come through I had texts come
through I had all these different things
like text are really tough because I'm
sitting there on working on my computer
and my phone's over on the side and
it'll start doing its little like hey
pay attention pay attention I'm over
here and so you got to like put your
phone away when I did this regularly I
did this for a while many years ago one
of the things I did is I put my phone in
another room I didn't even I had no
phone there I made sure there was no way
to get a hold of me or distract me from
it and this includes I said the next
seven days I think it is going to be
very valuable for you to not only do a
work rated St thing but try something
that is not necessarily work rated so it
may be things like I'm going to do a
Pomodoro where I clean a bathroom or I'm
cleaning the kitchen or I'm organizing
my office or whatever it is to see that
to get you just sort of I feel that that
there is value in Focus we talk so much
about like you know and we are like the
world screams at us with all these
different ways to get a hold of us and
you got to talk to me right now and I
got to do this I got to have 18
conversations at a time and you know how
much you get ticked off when you're on a
support on chat and you know that person
on the other side of that is supporting
18 people at the same time they're
really
distracted or if you really want to do
this go out with your significant other
and while you're talking to them over
dinner be looking at your phone the
whole time see how well that works out
for you so we don't like it when people
have their their uh attention split and
so we need to there's a reason for that
it's because if your attention is split
you're not giving all of your focus to
the tasks at hand so let's try doing
that with our work and that's I said
extend it seven days and pick something
that's even not a work thing because I
think this will help you do a better job
of it is that you'll start realizing
where focus and batching tasks together
and some of those things really do bring
value because it really comes down to if
you want to be more productive it's not
about doing more things at the same time
it's finding a way to reduce the natural
cost of Switching gears from one thing
to another if you want a purely
mechanical example of it if you go to
car drivers and they're like going
they're flying through all their
different gears one of the things is the
faster they can move from Gear 1 to two
to three to four to 5 to six to seven
the better they're that's like that's
all process Improvement there they're
still going to accelerate probably at a
roughly the same rate things like that
but that kachunk kachunk kach chunk
while you're changing gears that time
they can reduce so there's things like
that that that's where this has become
valuable so the challenge is next seven
days once a day at least least and I
would say just start with just one don't
don't push it too much do one Pomodoro
each day and then let us know your
thoughts especially as you get into that
day six and day seven and after you've
completed it see if you want to continue
or I would love to hear feedback on this
like where did you find uh it was a
challenge where did you find it worked
really well what are so and H part of it
is like what kinds of tasks did you
choose now before we wrap this one up
because normally we leave bonus material
for
um those that are out on the you in the
YouTube world in the visual world I do
want to throw one extra bonus thought as
you're going into this even though we're
going to do one each day in our
challenge one of the things you can do
when you decide to put several pomodoros
together it does not you do not have to
work break work break what you can do is
you can do work break and then keep the
keep that into the break for the next
section so that you're basically ling up
your breakes so instead of 255 255 you
can do 2510
2510 and do that as your breaks and I I
mentioned that because it was something
Michael said that triggered me had
forgotten about during the covid years
it felt like years I guess it was like a
year or something like that I was in a
situation where I was I was sort of
doing Pomodoro stuff but I was doing and
I wasn't doing as it officially but I
would do 45 minutes on 15 minutes off
and it was just something that worked
out really well for my schedule because
I wanted to keep focused because there
was like it was sometimes hard to keep
focused on the things I needed to get
done but one of the things I would do
towards the middle of the day after a
couple of
pomodoros is I would do 45 minutes and
then I would have a half hour before my
next 45 minute break during that half
hour I would go do a a mile walk
basically so it would be I could take
that half hour I could go spend you know
depending on how I did it and whether it
was a walk or jog or whatever I could
spend 15
20 25 minutes getting some exercise
getting away from my desk and it was a
great way to recharge and then come back
into that next 45 minute Focus you could
do the same thing if you want if you're
like a power Napper you could go take
that you know that time and go take a
you know 15-minute power nap you could
go get lunch break there's things you
can do if you shift that around so
that's your uh your bonus for this one
and once again love to hear what your
feedback is how does this work for you
how does it not work for you because
these are the kinds of things that we
all you know try to find ways to do
stuff better and we don't always have
that we don't like out of the gate we
don't always have the best approach so I
think hearing from others will help us
quite a bit you can do that by shooting
an email to info@ developer.com you can
leave comments whether this is podcast
wherever you see podcast or out on the
YouTube uh develop andur Channel you can
leave comments there those are probably
some of the best places to do it because
then you can share that with everybody
and get some feedback and get some of
the you know the community around this
and figure out how these things work for
you you can also contact us we've got a
contact form on develop or.com uh you
can go out to Twitter we are develop
andur you may want to you know throw
something there and just do like a
little retweets there to just let us
know how you're doing uh we'll say hash
Pomodoro because I know there's already
a hashtag out there and a lot of people
uh follow that in the community so that
may help that being
said big breath wrap this one up I don't
think it took us 25 minutes We prob we
should do that as a as an episode one
time is do our little Pomodoro episode
that being said go out there and have
yourself a great day a great week and we
will talk to you next
time all right bonus material from you
because I already threw mine out there
so the only additional bonus material
I'll add is in addition to the timer
that we talked about look at tools to
turn off the distractions so like if you
you saw the pre-episode bonus material
Rob was sitting there trying to turn off
all his little beeps and dings and
messages use the tools you have on your
devices Microsoft has ways of turning
things off Apple especially what's
really cool about that is if all your
devices are sync to the same account if
you turn focus on on one it turns that
on for all your devices so like your
watch your phone so all things of that
nature but try to limit what you allow
for those exceptions the more you can
block it the better it
is all right well that will wrap this
one up I want to thank you guys as
always for coming out here like I said
this is a perfect place for you leave
some comments about your Pomodoro uh
experiences and and suggestions
recommendations and things like that
because I think this is a this does go
back to we've talked so much about like
incremental steady progress and Pomodoro
just one a day kind of thing is like
perfect for that you can even set it I
used to do 15 minutes and we've we've
done our uh so many of our tutorials are
in these little 15 minute chunks you
could easily do a 15minute Pomodoro
every morning I'm going to spend just
set your timer you don't have to worry
about the break afterwards or you could
do like if you're doing two things do it
15 minutes five minute break 15 minutes
and then you're off and doing your day
and it took you a little over a half
hour and you had two things probably
that you were progressing on and as just
a sort of like personal experience I had
a period for about a couple of years I
had four of them I did and I didn't I
didn't do breaks I did 15 15 15 15 it
did usually took me because I was
Switching gears took me a couple minutes
between each one during that time I was
working on a business I was building a
software application I was uh learning a
foreign language and uh I wish I could
remember the other one was um shoot I
forget what the other one I think oh the
other one was just um
daily Financial kind of stuff was just
like making sure that I had everything
all my ducks in a row paying bills and
stuff like that so I didn't wait till
the end of the week to get it or the end
of you know two weeks as I was just like
oh I was doing that so it was like a it
was an early start I'd you know start my
morning and that was like the first hour
of my day was cranking through those
things but it worked really well it was
amazing how much progress I made as I
got into the you know weeks added up and
months added up and the next day I know
I'd like I had built an application I'd
learned a foreign language
all that kind of stuff so that being
said we will wrap this one up go out
there and have yourself a great one and
we will talk to you next time
[Music]