The Pomodoro Technique optimizes my transition between free time and focus time. When I’m working, I want to be determined to solve the problem. When I’m having a break, I want to be totally detached from the working task.
New practitioners of the Pomodoro Technique often doubt that the tick-tack sound of the kitchen timer is quiet enough to not disturb their focus. And the ringing is questioned as well – is it disturbing to other people if you ring in a shared space?
A Pomodoro is a 25 minutes working session with maximum focus on the task. To gain as much result as possible from these 25 minutes of effort, I want to have a sustainable pace during the whole session.
The suggested method of starting a Pomodoro is to wind up a kitchen timer, and then focus on the working task until the timer rings.
Is it an advantage if the signals are more subtle than an alarming kitchen timer? What about if I use a quiet mobile phone with a summer? Or perhaps I just need to have my eye, now and then, on the wristwatch?
Do I really need to have regulated sessions at all? If I just start working when I’m ready and then, when I feel unfocused, just stop working – would that create the same result?
Focus enablers and disablers
All my mental engines should start immediately when the Pomodoro is started. And they shouldn’t decrease their power until the session time is over.
After the Pomodoro comes a short break for 3-5 minutes. My mind should be totally detached from the working task during the break. If my mental engines are instantaneously stopped when the break starts, then the detachment will be optimal.
The need for disabling and enabling my focus on the working task happens many times every day. Ideally, I want this behaviour to be controlled by the spinal cord, without the need for a more cognitive evaluation of the situation.
Reflex as enabler and disabler
A specific signal (stimuli) that automatically generates a specific action is called a reflex. The signal could for example be a gesture or a sound. The action that is happening, in my case, is total focus on or total detach from the working task.
During his research on the physiology of digestion, the 1904 Russian Nobel prize winner Ivan Petrovitj Pavlov noticed that the lab dogs began to salivate every time when they saw the lab technicians who normally fed them. The fact that the dogs salivate when they saw the food is called an unconditional reflex. The food is the unconditional signal and the salivate is the unconditional action. Pavlov started to play a special sound with a tuning fork a few seconds before the food was served the dogs. After a while the dogs started to salivate also when only the sound was played, even though no food was served. This is a conditional reflex.
These two kinds of reflexes have different origins. The evolution of the specie created the unconditional reflex, while the experiences of the individual organism created the conditional reflex.
To focus on or detach from the working task is the actions of Pomodoro Technique. I want to associate unconditional signals for enabling these actions in an unconditional reflex. The signals should be easily distinguished – visible, audible or tactilely. And they should be unique in the meaning of not being used in other reflexes that I could confuse with the Pomodoro reflexes. To wind up the kitchen timer, to hear a tick-tack or to write a cross in my To Do Today form are clear gestures and sounds.
Reflexes as focus enablers in the sports world
Conditional reflexes are well known phenomenon in the sports world. Turk Wendell, a former Major League Baseball star, used to brush his teeth between every inning. Captain of Chelsea and England national football team, John Terry, always listens to the same Usher CD in his car, when he drives to a game.
And most impressive of all: One of the football world’s best strikers in the 21st century, Adrian Mutu, stated very clear that “Curses cannot touch me because I wear my underwear inside out.”. Mutu has trained a reflex, where the signal is to turn his underwear inside out and the action is to focus on the upcoming game.
Are these examples meaningless superstition acts or pure focusing enablers?
Putting it all together
- I want a quick transition from the mind state of detached to the mind state of focus. This will let me have the pace already from the start of the working session.
- To let my mind absorb what I just learned and to be able to see things from a new point of view I detach from the working task during a short break. I want a quick transition from the mind state of focus to the mind state of detached when I go for a break. This will be the optimal break.
- I don’t want to constantly consider if I should stop focus, when I’m in the mind state of focus. Something else should wake me up when it’s time to transfer my mind state.
- Pavlov showed that repeated signals could be used to provoke actions in a conditional reflex.
To wind up the kitchen timer is my signal to focus. The tick-tack is the signal that it’s still focus time. And the ringing makes my mind transit to the state of detached from the working task.
What about sound pollution in shared spaces then? In order to not disturb my neighbours in my shared space, we all have our own personal ring signal.
Additional facts:
- The story of Pavlov is often told as if he signalled the occurrence of food by ringing a bell. His written notes revealed the use of a wide variety of stimuli. This includes whistles, metronomes, tuning forks, and even visual stimuli, in addition to ringing a bell.
- Francesco Cirillo, the inventor of Pomodoro Technique, wrote: “What’s more, to mark the end of a Pomodoro or to eliminate a finished activity from the To DoToday Sheet, Pomodoro practitioners should use explicit gestures. For this reason it’s better if these aren’t automated.”
- Turk Wendell wore jersey number 99, in honour of a character in the movie Major League (played by Charlie Sheen). Also, in 2000 he signed a contract worth 9 999 999 dollars and 99 cents.
- Adrian Mutu was caught in a cocaine test in 2004 and was fired from Chelsea. He was then banned from English football for a while. But that didn’t stop Italian side Juventus from signing a five year contract with him.
0 Responses to “Programming with underwear inside out”