Yamazumi Your Life!

The Power of the Pomodoro

Simplicity is power. The beauty of the Pomodoro Technique (R), the personal productivity tool developed decades ago by Francesco Cirillo, is that it works. Exponentially.

I was a skeptic at first. A grizzled veteran of innumerable time management strategies and life-hacking ideas, I snootily disdained people who couldn't maintain focus for 25 minutes and needed a tomato egg timer to do so. Then I realised that I had become that person.

We are all drinking from a fire hose of information, in the poignant words of Zen Habits sage Leo Babauta. Since my college days, when I could immerse myself in deep concentration for hours, the world has changed. We are bombarded with incessant, microscopic pinpricks of demands for our time, each of which saps our finite energies to one tiny degree.

We suffer hundreds of daily emails and attachments scrolling through our smartphones and our computers. We mainline on blogs and apps and RSS feeds, secure in the illusion of productivity. It is so much more fun to frolic in the enticing shallows of knowledge and avoid the rigorous challenge of intensive, purposeful thought. Yet twenty five minutes can change everything.

The trick is to focus, intensely and with gusto, on a single topic for a defined unit of time - the so-called pomodoro. The rhythmic cadence of the accompanying tomato timer soothes the mind, allowing your haring and darting thought stream to address itself to a single topic. The rituals become almost compulsive; the process of goal definition, the logging and the setting and re-setting of that little red tomato - I use My Little Pomodoro on my MacBook Pro and Pomodoro on my iPhone. And after 117 pure Pomodoros of lean time, ranging from 25 minutes to 1 hour in duration, my productivity has started to surge.

Yes there are caveats. The secret is goal definition - if your objectives are skewed or in denial, you will simply accomplish more junk, more efficiently. Yet if force-ranking is applied, the most important tasks are set in stone, and the frog is eaten daily, then the results can be quite simply astounding. The Pomodoro works equally effectively for the green and yellow phases of the Yamazumi board - both the leading edge and execution phases, and the essential consolidation and maintenance modes. 

The technique sometimes struggles in unplanned, malleable office environments, such as a trading floor, when constant interruptions are the norm or instant reaction is required. But for any manager who has autonomy over task, and needs simple and persistent motivation to knock down obstacles, the Pomodoro is a fantastic technique. I would still recommend additional time after the Pomodoro ends for reflective integration, when we step outside the tramlines of task completion and seek new ideas, connections and insights.

Yet when you need to take a scythe to a swathe of tasks, then Pomodoro is a fine solution. Everyone has lofty goals and ambitious dreams; it is in the mundane, apparently overwhelming steps to achieve them that people lose heart.

Don't. Set that tomato timer and take just one more step.

(c) WestOcean 2011

All trademarks mentioned herein are acknowledged.

 

 

The Power of the Pattern Interrupt

The pattern interrupt is one of the time-tested classics of cognitive psychology. You're grappling with and trying to overcome a particularly challenging problem or roadblock. The frontal attack strategy isn't working - it's like the proverbial "broken record". The answer is often simply to step out of the rut and spend a couple of hours doing something totally different. This will frequently release trapped mental energy, almost like the dam in a reservoir bursting. You often find that when you return to the original problem the problem has not changed, but you have.

So far, so conventional. Yet if we all know this, why is this so hard to do? First, there's the heavy weight of social expectation, particularly in a commercial environment. We are told to relentlessly focus on a single goal, so that even re-framing the problem can appear like a sign of defeat - a blow to our pride. That's is why it's always best to remind ourselves of the Pareto Rule - that the critical success factors that deliver the 80% of results are contained within the 20% of inputs. There is no glory or honour in slogging through the dreary and irrelevant 80% of inputs. That's why I recommend using the Yamazumi Board as a key control device to assess what REALLY matters in any projects.

Pattern interrupt, if managed prudently, can work at a "lifestyle design" level too. We all realise the importance of a change of scene at an intuitive level, which is why we take holidays outside our home town and even travel to far-flung and exotic locations. Of course travel is aimed not primarily at changed our surroundings but ourselves. You may not wish to take a gap year from integration testing to travel to Japan to qualify as a snowboarding instructor (as a friend recently did) but a simple walk in the park could have a similar refreshing effect. 

The power of the pattern interrupt to re-frame problems and recharge energies is dramatic. Here on the written page it seems blindingly obvious, but applying it is as usual the tough part. Proper process control is essential. When does a genuine and beneficial pattern interrupt become a distraction or a simple avoidance strategy? If you're working on a big project,the follow guidelines will help.

• Keep the pattern interrupt short (two hours at most)
• Keep it tightly defined in scope and beneficial in effect. Do not exceed the initial plan.
• Reflect on the process afterward. Take time to think and recharge. What has the pattern interrupt given you?

Now, on to the next project!

James Rozel 

You may not need a holiday - just a quick pattern interrupt...:-)

 

Time Management System

We are all searching for a time management system that really works.The pages of the Internet are overflowing with tips and techniques for using time effectively. So many people seem to be drowning under a tidal wave of paperwork and must-do lists. People spend their lives juggling endless priorities and fighting off myriad demands from different people in all directions. Has technology helped?  Evidently not, since the instant communication provided by the email, internet and mobile devices has only aggravated the task overload. Authors have made fortunes offering systems that work and employees experiment with systems of to-do lists and tickler files. Companies invest millions on office productivity software which will supposedly speed up cycle time and expedite results. Yet we all seem busier than ever!

The time management system that is right for you will depend on your circumstances, working environment and goals. Here are twelve simple and effective techniques which have helped me. They do not require any special processes, or philosophy, but can be applied on a flexible basis to suit different circumstances and environments. Think of this list as a time management system tool kit from which you can select the ideas that work best. The great philosopher Wiliam of Occam said that the simplest solution was always the best, and indeed I have applied many of these with great success. Here is a time management system that really works.

1. Apply the Pareto rule, ruthlessly. As Richard Koch explained in his masterly book “The 80/20 Principle”, 20% of all inputs result in 80% of outputs and 20% of actions deliver 80% of results. Identify the critical few factors that make a real difference in your life, and multiply the power and impact of these. Eliminate the non-value added activities. 
2. Eat that frog! This is Brian Tracy’s famous concept – the idea that you start the day with the biggest, ugliest, least appetising task – the “frog”.Once the frog has been digested, you have already secured a significant victory for that day and the momentum from this will set you up for further success.
3. "Do It Now". This is an old self-help axiom. A young Tom Hopkins once asked a successful businessman for the secret to success, and the older man scribbled these words on a napkin - “I must do the most productive thing possible at any given moment”. Of course this willnever be fully achievable, and the need for a balanced life is also paramount, but any concept that spurs you to action is a good thing. Remember - procrastination is poison.
4. Eliminate bottlenecks. In a factory, engineers will identify constraints or blockages in the production process. According to Goldratt’s famous Theory of Constraints, they will optimise work flow up to the bottleneck (so you don’t have inventory stacking up just before it) and then seek to elevate, or eliminate the bottleneck. What are the bottlenecks in your own office and how can they be removed?
5. Remember the power of completion. Margaret Thatcher once stated that it was easy to start something, but the hardest thing to do was to see it through to completion. Whether an admirer or an opponent of the British prime minister, everyone agrees she got things done. There is something psychologically gratifying about setting a specific, timebound objective and accomplishing it.
6. Turn off Outlook. The tendency to check for incoming email, and treat the most recent email as the most important, is deeply ingrained in most office workers. Remember the Pareto rule again - 80% of email will likely add no value.
7. Control access. Don’t make yourself too available. General de Gaulle, when President of France,made a point of being virtually inaccessible when at his country retreat of Colombey-les-deux-Eglises. There was one telephone in the gatehouse, and an aide would have to run up the drive to advise the President of nuclear war or some other pressing issue. Contrast this with the average businessperson today who is glued to their BlackBerry or cellphone. This is the problem with open-plan offices. Their great virtue – enabling communication with co-workers – can become their great drawback. Put your phone on voicemail, if you can. You can respond to people in your own time.
8. Make appointments with yourself in Outlook. If you have some control over your work flow or location, go to another area (a coffee shop, a meeting room, even the staff canteen) and dedicate the time-slot solely to concentrating on the most urgent problem
9. Do less. Leo Babauta,the celebrated blogger and founer of Zenhabits.net, recommends the “haiku” strategy. This means that by deliberately limiting yourself to a few tasks (similar to the word constraints in haiku poetry), execution will be cleaner and much more effective. Always ask yourself the question - what really matters? Learn to say no to managers, co-workers and your own direct reports.
10. Eliminate waste. This means any non-value added activity. This could mean social networking sites or aimless phone calls. I lived without television for two years and my free time increased exponentially. It was two years of glorious freedom.
11. Place an imaginary value on your time. Imagine you are a top lawyer charging $1,200 an hour for your services. If you treated your time as if it were that precious and your life as full of so much potential, not a second would be wasted. This is the cure for dithering or procrastination.
12. Yamazumi Your Life! A Yamazumi board is a colourful stacked bar chart in a factory showing the time taken in an industrial process. Necessary set-up time is labelled yellow, blockages and delays are coloured red, and effective value-add time is shown as green. It is a tremendous visual tool to identify where delays and roadblocks are occurring in a process and can be eye-opening. This is of the course the metaphor and title for this blog, "Yamazumi Your Life!".

So here is a time management system that will kick-start your productivity. Taken one by one, they are innocuous and incremental ideas. Together, they add up to a genuine time management revolution. Time to storm the barricades!