How to Stop Procrastinating: The Pomodoro Technique

One of the good things about Pomodoro is knowing that after every 25 minutes of work there’s a five-minute comfort and distraction break. This is really useful as it creates a boundary between temptation and virtue by making you consciously aware that a five-minute period to give in to temptation is heading your way. You can take this idea a step further.

Pomodoro Technique - using a timer to be productiveIf you find yourself procrastinating, checking Facebook, doodling and daydreaming, realise that all have their place. Rather than beating yourself up for doing these things (which adds more drama to what you’re ultimately trying to resist and hence reinforces the resistance to it anyway), simply create the right boundary.

So if you catch yourself procrastinating, your boss-self is allowed to decide,

“OK, five more minutes of this procrastination and then we’re moving on to this specific thing”

In creating this, what you’ve done is demystified and disempowered the procrastination and you’ll often find that such a boundary moves you along at the end of the five minutes and into what’s required of you now that you’ve ‘had your share’.

Occasionally you may no longer want or need to spend those five minutes procrastinating as you realise how absurd your delaying tactics really are. Likewise knowing at the start of the day that you have 20 minutes at lunchtime to check celebrity gossip websites will help you focus through the morning: your reward is coming, just you wait and see. Being self-aware enough to ‘call out’ these behaviours and actively manage them will get you a long way.