Strategic use of pomodoros

My life is in a very different place now than at the start of the year. One of the bigger changes is working at Writers’ Centre Norwich, a hugely ambitious and progressive organisation which always has a dizzying array of active projects, where I’m tasked with using skills both familiar and unfamiliar to navigate a complex political and cultural landscape involving all kinds of external partners and stakeholders.

I’ve had to  completely redefine my understanding of words like ‘challenging’ and ‘busy’. I wasn’t using them correctly before, it turns out. (more…)

How to be more productive with the pomodoro technique

I’ve been testing the pomodoro technique for the last 24 hours. I’m using it right now while writing this blog post. It’s already made me more productive and efficient – I think.

I first read about the technique last year sometime over on the Buffer blog. It sounded intriguing but I wasn’t really in a position to actually try it out – at work in particular I was in the middle of several intense projects and it really wasn’t the time to start experimenting with alternative productivity approaches.

So here’s how it works: (more…)