How a freelancer spend time in the short break in the Pomodoro technique?

Hello! What’s your background, and what are you working on?

I am a Computer Technician, Telecommunications Technician, Bachelor of Science & Technology, Information Engineer, Master and Bachelor of Computer Science. I have over 20 years of experience in the IT area, working with support and consulting to technology products and services in small, medium and large companies.

I currently work as a freelancer, mostly remotely. I also work with software development, mainly back end. In addition, I am interested in AI, Big Data and front end.

I’ve been using the app for a while but I’m enjoying it. With it I organize my work tasks and my personal tasks as well.

How does this technique boost your productivity?

This technique helps me stay focused and, when the application is working, I have better control of what activities I am doing. For example, when I start an activity, close other apps and keep working only on what I’m focused on, it creates a greater sense of urgency. Instead of feeling like you have infinite time on the job to get things done and then wasting those precious hours of work on distractions, you know you only have a short time to progress as far as possible on a task. So, it’s just a few minutes giving the best of yourself

Why are you using this Pomodoro technique?

I have used this technique for a long time and since then I have managed to be more productive. I use another app to keep track of time, but this app stopped working on Windows 10 after an update, so I switched to Focus, Commit. This technique helps me stay focused and, when the app is working, I have better control what activities I’m doing. Instead of feeling like you have endless time at work to get things done and then wasting those precious hours of work on distractions, you know you only have little time to get as far as possible on a task. So, it’s just a few minutes giving the best of yourself.

What are  your difficulities to keep using this technique?

The main difficulties I have are managing activities that take less time to complete than the time configured in the application, or activities that do not last exactly a multiple of time configured in the application. When this happens, I finish doing the activity and start another one immediately after the remaining time of the current activity, but this makes the metrics difficult and I can’t measure the correct time later, just have a poorly calculated estimate.

Another difficulty I have are urgent activities that appear suddenly and that were not planned. In this case I have to interrupt what I was doing without stopping the timer

What are you supposed to do in short breaks?

In the short intervals I usually take it from the chair and go to the bathroom, or I will take water or something light. If there is time left, I check the social media, or else I browse the internet usually on news sites

I want to use this space to make a report of the application does not work well with the feature of fixing the taskbar in Windows 10. For several times I have fixed the application in the taskbar but after some time it just disappears from the taskbar , forcing me to repeat the process again.

Cover Photo by Simon Migaj on Unsplash

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