25-minute tidying: Pomodoro technique
I tried the Pomodoro Technique
Here’s what happened!
As most of you know, I get easily overwhelmed, which is why I started with doing 10-minute tidying. What are the benefits of 10-minute tidying?
Excellent for daily maintenance (like the dishes and emptying the sink)
It’s actually doable!
It’s only 10 minutes!
But, here’s the drawback:
You won’t get into anything beyond the dishes and sink.
Unfortunately, I have to face the fact that 10 minutes just isn’t enough to tackle the rest of the house. Which is a real bummer. I obviously enjoy tidying (I’m writing this blog!), but it’s not what I want to do with every moment of my day.
My goal is probably the same as yours. I want to achieve a level of tidiness and decluttering so that my maintenance needs to keep it there are minimal.
So, like anything, when you have an excess of something, unfortunately you have to expend a bit more to bring it back to equilibrium. It’s sort of like tackling debt.
Image by Heather Ford
No mo’ FOMO (or, the benefits of boredom and quarantine)
This week, going on over 3 months of quarantine with not much to do—I’ve exhausted the thrill of Netflix, Zoom hangouts, ordering food delivery, walked every different route I can think of through my neighborhood—I’ve reached a level of boredom where the idea of tidying longer than 10 minutes no longer feels overwhelming, but like a perfectly reasonable option.
Before, when I only had my weekend to really hunker down and revel in lazing around the house, I definitely fought against “chores” because the last thing I wanted to do on my non-work days was “work.” Now that I work from home (which I’m very lucky I can do), I think my lazy-home-reveling cup is finally full. Plus, since there’s really nothing else to go do at this point, it feels like I’ve become immortal and I’m going to go on forever like this, so there’s no longer this feeling of missing out (or FOMO). Because there’s nothing to miss out on…
Why 25 minutes?
Honestly, the reason I decided to do this was an email from a company I don’t even remember signing up for. The email caught my attention because the first line was about the Pomodoro Technique. Which I found intriguing because I love pasta and recognize the word pomodoro from the names of pasta sauces. It means tomato in Italian.
Anyway, I looked it up, and the technique is basically the 10-minute interval tidying I recommend, but you do 25-minutes instead:
Choose a task.
Set the time for 25 minutes.
Do task for 25 minutes.
It’s just an interval technique like I’ve recommended in other posts, particularly when you’re overwhelmed. But the creator of the technique recommends 25 minutes instead of any other interval.
I researched it more, and there are a couple additional tips you can choose to do (or not), but the technique recommends:
Do sets of 25 minutes.
Take a short break in between sets (like 10 minutes).
After doing 4 sets, take a longer break (like 30 minutes or an hour).
I didn’t read if there was a prescription for the length of breaks in between sets, so I’m just making up some suggested break times.
How I Pomodoro?
I listen to a ton of podcasts. So, when I decided to give this technique a try, here’s what I did:
Started a podcast.
Set the timer.
Started with my usual 10-minute tidying tasks (dishes, sink, recycling, trash).
Moved on to tidying whatever was nearby (kitchen counters for instance).
I discovered I actually enjoyed the longer session instead of cutting it shorter. After all, I’m not really doing a whole lot outside the house these days so what’s an extra 15 minutes of tidying? It’s not cutting into much.