Found another helpful addition to the gmail part of the system—install google lab “Multiple Inboxes”, and add an inbox for “Action” and an inbox for “Waiting” (or whatever labels you use for those categories). I set mine to show below the main inbox. So now whenever I go to gmail, I see my inbox, whatever “action” emails I need to deal with, and whatever emails I’m waiting for a response on. It helps make sure I don’t forget about my “processed” emails.
What modifications?
I really like the pomodoro technique (so far—still in the novice stages of using it), but its rigidity doesn’t lend itself well to a lot of tasks that I deal with—reading papers and writing code, mainly. In both cases, it takes a lot of work to wrap my head around things, and I lose that if I take a break at the wrong time. So when I’m doing those tasks, I’m breaking off chunks that roughly correspond to 20 minutes (like a sub function of code, or reading the intro and methods of a paper), and working until I hit that milestone. When I’m doing something where it doesn’t matter when I take breaks, I’m trying to follow the pomodoro technique more exactly.
Other than that… I’m actually not sure that I’m doing much that’s very different. I think that may have been a reflexive addition of fudge factor. Although I reserve the right to make further modifications.
Oh—one minor addition to the Eizenhower matrix. I’m trying to follow a common rule in the academic world, that every day you should spend at least an hour working on the project that is closest to completion. Which is just a way of weighting things within the “Important” row.
but [Pomodoro’s] rigidity doesn’t lend itself well to a lot of tasks that I deal with—reading papers and writing code, mainly. In both cases, it takes a lot of work to wrap my head around things, and I lose that if I take a break at the wrong time.
I definitely have this problem too, now that I write a lot more code than I used to back in Aug 2013. You may be interested in my proposed solution, the Pomodoro for programmers.
Found another helpful addition to the gmail part of the system—install google lab “Multiple Inboxes”, and add an inbox for “Action” and an inbox for “Waiting” (or whatever labels you use for those categories). I set mine to show below the main inbox. So now whenever I go to gmail, I see my inbox, whatever “action” emails I need to deal with, and whatever emails I’m waiting for a response on. It helps make sure I don’t forget about my “processed” emails.
Other than that… I’m actually not sure that I’m doing much that’s very different. I think that may have been a reflexive addition of fudge factor. Although I reserve the right to make further modifications.
Oh—one minor addition to the Eizenhower matrix. I’m trying to follow a common rule in the academic world, that every day you should spend at least an hour working on the project that is closest to completion. Which is just a way of weighting things within the “Important” row.
I definitely have this problem too, now that I write a lot more code than I used to back in Aug 2013. You may be interested in my proposed solution, the Pomodoro for programmers.