Pomodoro technique

A great way to crank through a lot of work in concerted and intense way is to use the Pomodoro Technique. It is especially useful if the thing you need to crank through is something you just cannot bring yourself to do! You have those too, don’t you?

The system is named after the tomato shaped kitchen timers (pomodoro is Italian for tomato) and a timer of some sort is essential in allowing you to adopt the system.

The theory is that you have a 25 minute sprint on a given task, a five minute break and then repeat. After you complete a given number of pomodoros (usually 4) you give yourself a 15 minute break. Rinse and repeat.

The reason the technique works for me is that I can fool my brain into reducing resistance on a task because ‘I’m only going to spend 25 minuets on it’. Before I know it I’ve cycled through 4 pomodoros and I’m sitting back with a cup of tea and patting myself on the back because the task is all done.

Not everyone is a fan – see this great article by Mike Vardy on the problem with the pomodoro technique. All I can say is that it works for me, it might work for you and why not give it a try – the cost of entry is almost nothing. In fact you may already have a suitable device in your kitchen cupboard.

You can also download software timers for Mac or Windows. There are smartphone and tablet apps to be had as well. My favourite is this one for the iPhone. It has the uninspired name of ‘Pomodoro – the best Pomodoro Technique App’ but it works well. It has a customisable timer function, keeps stats of your completed cycles and a basic to do list. I use the todo list to plan a series of runs for the morning ahead of time so I can just get my head down and get the work done.

If you want to learn more about the technique the I suggest you take a look at this video or just goole it and have a poke around.

Personal kanban – an introduction

kanbanflow.com

First things first, what is a kanban and what is a personal kanban?

Wikipedia can help us out here. In short kanban was developed to feed the ‘just in time’ manufacturing method, but has been adapted and adopted by knowledge workers and software developers using the agile method in particular

This is where the notion of the personal kanban comes along. The best resource I have found for this is over at the excellent personalkanban site. Jim Benson defines a personal kanban as “a simple way to visualise and control your work.”

There are just 2 basic rules:

1. Visualise your work – usually with post-its on a whiteboard
2. Limit your work-in-progress – don’t work on more than you can cope with. It is not unusual to limit yourself to just one WIP when that is the best way to get from here to there.

Visualisation

A basic personal kanban board has 3 columns:

1. to do (sometimes rather pessimistically called ‘backlog’)
2. work in progress (or ‘doing’)
3. done

You store up work in column 1, move it to column 2 when the time comes to work on it and then move it to column 3 to get a nice warm feeling once it is done

Limit work-in-progress

This is, for me, the major strength in the personal kanban. You only move work to column 2 when you are really, really working on it. And you do not break your chosen limit of how many items you can have in your WIP column.

Now – advice on what limit you should have on your WIP varies but there is pretty consistent advice that it should never exceed 5. I think this is pretty sound advice and for me it seldom moves above 3.

When to use a personal kanban

I don’t use a personal kanban all the time. But I do use it when I know I need a sustained period of ‘heads down, full throttle’ on one or two projects.

When I have a whole bunch of work that I must get through in a relatively short period then I turn to my kanban, say 1 week.

I spend some time listing all my to do items in column 1 – a mixture of small projects or sub-projects or even down to the level of Next Actions. These must, when aggregated, get me to where I need to be at the end of my sprint.

Then select a number to move to the doing/WIP column, the number will depend on the limit you set yourself. Typically I chose 2 or 3 items.

Digital personal kanban

A physical personal kanban can be set up on a whiteboard, in a note book, or in a digital format.

Chose the one which suits you and meets the requirement of best allowing you to visualise your work.

I have found several digital options:

• kanbanflow Is a great option, it’s free, allows collaboration and includes a pomodoro timer to help you focus
• kanbanery Has a free plan but with some limits
• onlinekanban Is a very simple kanban