MODERN APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

Since I’ve been working in a home office (actually a cottage in the garden) I’ve become much more aware of my time management habits, both good and bad.

I’ve had to become far more disciplined with my work habits. Working in a typical corporate office (as a coder, anyway) much of your schedule is imposed on you from external sources. You have to turn up by a particular time, you need to be at your desk (or a meeting) throughout the day, you can’t leave until a certain time at the earliest etc etc.

Working from a home office is a different proposition altogether, and you have to try and impose your desired work habits upon yourself. Towards this end I’ve been looking at certain ways to improve my productivity, and lately I’ve been playing with something called the Pomodoro Technique.

Pomodoro is the name of a productivity improvement technique developed by an Italian chap called Francesco Cirilllo, originally using a tomato shaped kitchen timer (hence the name, Pomodoro is Italian for Tomato. I think.) It’s a pretty simple idea – break your work periods into 25 minute sessions with 5 minute breaks, with a longer 15 minute break after 4 periods, and you’ll get more done.

Back when I used to work in London, I actually used a variation of this whenever I had some tedious job that I really didn’t want to code. You know the sort of thing, you’ve effectively figured it all out in your head, and the rest of the work is just a simple matter of programming. By starting a timer and committing to coding without any distractions for the next 40 minutes or whatever, I was able to plough through the tedious stuff in no time and get it out of the way.

Anyway, so how did I find the Pomodoro technique? Well, really effective for certain tasks and a bit of a hindrance for others.

It was great for jobs that weren’t really that interesting, or when I was struggling to get started on something. As part of my implementation I turned off lots of distractions (mail client, web browser, twitter client), and the mere act of working solidly for 25 minutes improved my concentration and helped me get through the to do list.

25 minutes was ideal for this because mentally it’s extremely easy to commit to concentrate on one thing only for that period, especially with a small break at the end.

And for programmers the 5 minutes break is about right, because I found I didn’t lose my frame of reference much during that time.

For some coding though, especially when I was in the zone and hacking away, I found it a hindrance. 25 minutes really isn’t long enough in this case, and often I found myself ignoring the timer and not stopping when I should.

Would I have improved my productivity more If I’d have been stricter with myself in these periods? Possibly, but coding has it’s own natural breaks and I’ve found it’s best to recognise and use these when you’re working well.

The verdict?

Definitely a useful time management tool, especially as a way of dealing with procrastination.

I’m certainly going to use Pomodoro with tasks I don’t enjoy as much, but perhaps customise it for longer periods when I’m coding. And I think you really need to manage your level of external interruption, otherwise it’s not going to help at all.

Francesco has a whole website dedicated to the technique and the pragmatic programmers have a book out about it as well.