In previous posts, we've written about how time-blocking can help you stay organized. But it's not the only approach that will help you focus on what's most important, combine productive periods and rests, and stay on track with everything you have to get done in a day. Here are several other proven methods that will help you better manage your available time.
1) Pomodoro Method
In the 1980s, Italian university student Francesco Cirillo noticed that, like many of his classmates, he was struggling to focus. From observing his peers and his own work habits, he realized that distractions and the inability to concentrate on one thing were at the root of the issue. He wanted to test himself to see if he could maintain complete focus for 10 minutes. So he used a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato to time this. Once he’d forced himself to extend beyond the initial duration, Cirillo began playing around with different work-rest ratios and settled on 25 minutes on and three to five minutes off.
When it came time to name his method, Cirillo came back to the Italian name for tomato: pomodoro. He is uncompromising on the way the work period has to function. “A Pomodoro can’t be interrupted; it marks 25 minutes of pure work,” he wrote in a summary of his method, which has been taught to over two million people and inspired a bestselling book. “A Pomodoro can’t be split up; there is no such thing as half of a Pomodoro or a quarter of a Pomodoro.” Cirillo went on to suggest that if you get interrupted, you should start the period over again. He also recommended tying work blocks to specific tasks on a To Do Today list that you check off as you complete them. Several Pomodoros can be dedicated to one of these items.
Like a well-designed workout session, the Pomodoro Method introduces a twist partway through your workday. After you complete four rounds, you should take a longer break, stepping away from your work for 15 to 30 minutes. This will give your brain time to bounce back from the highly focused productivity bursts you just completed. The Pomodoro Method is best suited to shorter duration to-do items that require quick and intense bursts of concentration.
2) 52-17 Rule
It would be logical to think that the people who log the most work hours get the most done. But that’s not necessarily true. “Turns out, what the most productive 10% of our users have in common is their ability to take effective breaks,” Julia Gifford wrote in an article for careers website The Muse. “Specifically, the most productive people work for 52 minutes at a time, then break for 17 minutes before getting back to it.” This observation jives with a University of Illinois study that recommended taking a break every hour.
The original survey that identified the 52-17 rule was conducted by the makers of the productivity app DeskTime in 2014. Since then, they have re-run the numbers a couple of times. In 2021, it became clear that people were working longer with bigger breaks. “Right before the pandemic, the productivity ratio was 80-17—80 minutes of working sprints, followed by an average of 17-minute breaks,” a DeskTime blog post revealed. Then during the pandemic, these numbers increased again, to 112 minutes of work and 26 minutes of rest. This was perhaps due to people surveyed having less distractions and in-person meetings while working from home.
However, in a Fast Company article, Robert Pozen from the MIT Sloan School of Management said that even high performing musicians cannot sustain their attention or energy levels for sessions lasing more than 75 to 90 minutes. So it’s unlikely that going any further without a break is beneficial. The one possible exception could be if you’re in macro flow, that rare state in which you can stay creative and focused for an extended period. Whereas sticking to the 52-17 rule gives you long enough to really sink your teeth into a complex project while providing enough rest to bounce back for another bout of productivity.
3) Ultradian Rhythm
In an episode of his podcast, Stanford neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman shared that he often sets aside a longer period of around 90 minutes to focus on a single task. This practice is based on what researchers like Israeli psychophysiologist Peretz Lavie and his colleagues discovered during the 1980s – that our energy levels are built around what they called ultradian rhythms. That is “the optimal human limit for focusing intensely on any given task,” The Energy Project CEO Tony Schwartz explained in Harvard Business Review. “Over the course of 90 minutes, especially when we’re maximally focused, we move from a relatively high state of energy down into a physiological trough.”
That decline is why after each 90-minute ultradian work session, Huberman advised that “you spend at least 10 minutes and ideally as long as 30 minutes and go through what I call deliberate defocus.” He went on to suggest performing menial tasks or those that don’t require a lot of concentration during these decompression blocks, including staying off your phone. “That period of idling is essential for your ability to focus, much the same way that rest between sets of resistance training or exercise is essential to focus or perform during the actual sets,” Huberman explained.
Basing work and rest intervals around your ultradian rhythm is best suited to longer tasks where you need sustained attention, can create the conditions to get into a flow state, and – like a mid-length run – are able to keep going at a moderate pace. With any of these work-rest methods, using a simple timer (whether it’s shaped like a tomato or not) can keep you on track and ensure you don’t go too hard for too long. Or you could set Tempo from Ergodriven to raise or lower your adjustable desk at a certain time interval to remind you when to take a break and when to get back on task.