This is a neat idea! It’s elegant enough that I’m surprised I haven’t heard of it before.
That said, I’m not sure how well it will work for me. Here are some potential problems I thought of while reading. Of course, people should try experiments for themselves, my relationship to work is pretty unusual.
Maybe most importantly, I’m not sure the premise of “it’s good for breaks to be proportional to the time you worked” actually applies to me? It’s certainly a reasonable hypothesis for how mental energy works, and it’s true to some resolution (if I do basically no work then I need basically no break, and if I work three days straight on a big project I’m definitely taking a big crash afterward) but I’m not sure it’s true on the scale of a day’s work.
If I’m doing some kind of physical or ops related work, then I can go all day—breaks seem like a waste. For computer work I occasionally do Ultraworking’s Work Marathon, and thus far when I’ve done that I’ve managed to solidly do 21 pomodoros every day, with a strict 30⁄10 duration. These things make me think that in order to do more work, I need the right environment, and not that I need to fine-tune my breaks.
It may be short breaks would be beneficial without your realising it. I read some research somewhere which showed that people often flag without realising it (or before they realise it), ie they don’t notice that their concentration declines.
My second thought was, “but then how can I get points??”. I have trouble doing work at all, and one of the main mechanisms that pomodoros provide for me is a form of gamification. If I do a pomodoro, I get a point. I’m highly motivated (relatively speaking) to make number go up, either daily, or my weekly average, or my yearly average. I often think to myself “let’s just make sure we do at least my average today”. It’s not clear to me how this could be extended to the non-integer land of ratio breaks. I suppose I could track total hours worked.
Indeed. For years I’ve set myself a target for time worked per day, which I track in a spreadsheet. I don’t always hit it each day, but try to ensure my monthly average does.
First thing I noticed was the name; I automatically thought “Right, I’ll just call them ratio breaks then”. I think the audience for productivity optimization is going to be totally fine with that name.
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.
This is a neat idea! It’s elegant enough that I’m surprised I haven’t heard of it before.
That said, I’m not sure how well it will work for me. Here are some potential problems I thought of while reading. Of course, people should try experiments for themselves, my relationship to work is pretty unusual.
Maybe most importantly, I’m not sure the premise of “it’s good for breaks to be proportional to the time you worked” actually applies to me? It’s certainly a reasonable hypothesis for how mental energy works, and it’s true to some resolution (if I do basically no work then I need basically no break, and if I work three days straight on a big project I’m definitely taking a big crash afterward) but I’m not sure it’s true on the scale of a day’s work.
If I’m doing some kind of physical or ops related work, then I can go all day—breaks seem like a waste. For computer work I occasionally do Ultraworking’s Work Marathon, and thus far when I’ve done that I’ve managed to solidly do 21 pomodoros every day, with a strict 30⁄10 duration. These things make me think that in order to do more work, I need the right environment, and not that I need to fine-tune my breaks.
It may be short breaks would be beneficial without your realising it. I read some research somewhere which showed that people often flag without realising it (or before they realise it), ie they don’t notice that their concentration declines.
My second thought was, “but then how can I get points??”. I have trouble doing work at all, and one of the main mechanisms that pomodoros provide for me is a form of gamification. If I do a pomodoro, I get a point. I’m highly motivated (relatively speaking) to make number go up, either daily, or my weekly average, or my yearly average. I often think to myself “let’s just make sure we do at least my average today”. It’s not clear to me how this could be extended to the non-integer land of ratio breaks. I suppose I could track total hours worked.
Could the time worked be the number you gamify? Though that might incentivize taking no breaks.
Indeed. For years I’ve set myself a target for time worked per day, which I track in a spreadsheet. I don’t always hit it each day, but try to ensure my monthly average does.
First thing I noticed was the name; I automatically thought “Right, I’ll just call them ratio breaks then”. I think the audience for productivity optimization is going to be totally fine with that name.
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.