Another major mechanism that pomodoros provide for me is getting me to do any work at all by forcing me to do a minimum amount of work. If I do zero pomodoros in a day, I’ll feel bad. But then all I need to do is start the timer, and as long as I can get myself to make it through the 25 minutes, I’ve done it! Now I’ve earned a point. If I just tried to wake up and then… do some work, and stop whenever I stopped, and then take the ratio break… I’m pretty sure I would just never start working. I’ve had a lot of days like this anyway, when for whatever reason I don’t use pomodoros. If the rule is “work however long you want”, then I will frequently drift in and out of working, or I’ll look at the clock and just suddenly realize that I wasn’t working for the past half hour. Pomodoros, with a visual, reasonable-length timer, give me a small sense of urgency and a reason to focus.
As hinted at near the end, Third Time is a superset of systems like Pomodoro, so there’s nothing to stop you using Pomodoros within Third Time (which fixes Pomodoro’s flaws).
Eg you could require your work stints to be 25 mins anyway—setting a 25 min alarm—and let Third Time handle the breaks and exceptions (eg interruptions). Or require 25 mins minimum, ie ignore the alarm if you want to keep working.
I think I may have ADHD [edit: I do], but I think this: “I’ll look at the clock and just suddenly realize that I wasn’t working for the past half hour.” is a more severe version of a problem that I have. For me, this problem never lasts for more than 5-10 minutes before I notice, unless perhaps I am very sleep-deprived. And for me, it is usually caused by sleep deprivation (which causes me to slip into daydreaming, or “microsleep”). Have you considered that you might have ADHD and/or sleep deprivation? If you do, then getting treatment for it might help more than any particular time management system.
And this goes for anyone who has particularly severe problems with time management as well, I suppose. It doesn’t mean you necessarily do have ADHD, but it does mean you should check the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, in my opinion.
Another major mechanism that pomodoros provide for me is getting me to do any work at all by forcing me to do a minimum amount of work. If I do zero pomodoros in a day, I’ll feel bad. But then all I need to do is start the timer, and as long as I can get myself to make it through the 25 minutes, I’ve done it! Now I’ve earned a point. If I just tried to wake up and then… do some work, and stop whenever I stopped, and then take the ratio break… I’m pretty sure I would just never start working. I’ve had a lot of days like this anyway, when for whatever reason I don’t use pomodoros. If the rule is “work however long you want”, then I will frequently drift in and out of working, or I’ll look at the clock and just suddenly realize that I wasn’t working for the past half hour. Pomodoros, with a visual, reasonable-length timer, give me a small sense of urgency and a reason to focus.
As hinted at near the end, Third Time is a superset of systems like Pomodoro, so there’s nothing to stop you using Pomodoros within Third Time (which fixes Pomodoro’s flaws).
Eg you could require your work stints to be 25 mins anyway—setting a 25 min alarm—and let Third Time handle the breaks and exceptions (eg interruptions). Or require 25 mins minimum, ie ignore the alarm if you want to keep working.
I think I may have ADHD [edit: I do], but I think this: “I’ll look at the clock and just suddenly realize that I wasn’t working for the past half hour.” is a more severe version of a problem that I have. For me, this problem never lasts for more than 5-10 minutes before I notice, unless perhaps I am very sleep-deprived. And for me, it is usually caused by sleep deprivation (which causes me to slip into daydreaming, or “microsleep”). Have you considered that you might have ADHD and/or sleep deprivation? If you do, then getting treatment for it might help more than any particular time management system.
And this goes for anyone who has particularly severe problems with time management as well, I suppose. It doesn’t mean you necessarily do have ADHD, but it does mean you should check the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, in my opinion.