What is the Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique helps me do quality work. Ok so I am making a rather big assumption: that I am capable of doing quality work. A more meaningful qualifier would be that this technique helps me do deep work.

Deep work is quality work. And deep work means that you get to focus on the task at hand, and more importantly, you don’t focus on anything else.

The Pomodoro Technique helps with that. So much so, I think it enables that. It gives you a framework, a “thing to do” when you say, “I want to do deep work, how do I go about it?”

You use the Pomodoro Technique.

You decide what you want to do. And then you set a timer for 55 minutes. You work on that task for 55 minutes, and then you take a break for 5 minutes. That’s one hour of work. You can do that a couple of times. The longest I have gone is almost 6 hours, and I was broadcasting that live on my YouTube channel! What fun! 🙂

That’s how I try to do it. Some do it for 25mins work, 5 min break. Some 45 minutes work, 10 minutes break.

Here is a video on Pomodoro Technique I made in Urdu:

And of course, let me address a common question related to the Pomodoro Technique.

Pomodoro is the Italian word for Tomato. Wait what? How does that help in answering the question!? OK hear me out: it’s called the Pomodoro technique because in many kitchens – allegedly – people use a timer for cooking, and that timer is shaped like a tomato.

And when you buy that for your kitchen and cooking, you ask for a Pomodoro timer – which is a manual timer that looks like a tomato. So yeah, naming conventions are silly like that sometimes. But the technique is powerful. Alhumdulilah. Also, I usually refer to it as the Tamatar Technique, so there.

I use the Pomodoro Tamatar Technique to help me fight laziness and be more productive. I am certain that if applied, you will find it to be useful in your work as well, inshAllah.