How long can you stay focused?
15 minutes ? 25 minutes? 40 minutes? An hour and a half?

In the current era, when we are bombarded with stimuli, it’s really hard to stay focused.

One of the methods that helps the people I work with is Pomodoro.

The Pomodoro Technique was developed by a guy named Francesco Cirillo in the late 80’s. The inspiration for it came from a tomato-shaped cooking timer he used while he was a university student.
The idea is to break work into ‘x’ time intervals (25 minutes according to tradition). After each interval (also known as a ‘Pomodoro’) you take a short break and after 4 Pomodoros you take a long break.

The steps:

* Decide what task you are working on
* Set the duration of the Pomodoro (for that matter, 25 minutes)
* Work on the task (and only on it!) until the timer rings
* When the timer rings, take a short break (3-5 minutes)
* After completing 4 Pomodoros in a row, take a long break (15-30 minutes)

You know yourself best! Whether shorter or longer periods of time suit you, the concept of focus and concentration without distractions for a period of ‘x’ time helps greatly in advancing tasks.

I guess not everyone has a tomato-shaped timer so here is a link to a nice website where you can set the durations of the Pomodoro and the breaks as you wish. At first, I recommend not using the smartphone timer in order to avoid distractions like messages/social networks as our goal is to try and refrain from them as much as possible.

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