Productivity Tip: The Pomodoro Technique

Today, we’ll discuss a productivity tip – the pomodoro technique. This is a time-boxing strategy developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980’s to break up one’s workflow. It’s especially helpful for someone like me, who can have trouble staying on-task, given a big project and a long amount of time.

For me, tasks can sometimes become gaseous where the amount of time it’ll take me to do something fills up to the exact amount of time I have to do something. In other words, the length fills whatever size time-container I put it in. But that’s obviously not the way it should be! Task length should be determined by difficulty- not how long we have to do them!

Thus, the pomodoro technique. This method has you first choose one a specific, actionable task to be done. Then you tackle that task for 25 minutes. Anyone can focus for 25 minutes. Once that time is up, you take a 5-10 minute break. Repeat two more times. On the fourth block of focus- take a longer break. Something like 20-30 minutes. Then repeat throughout the workday.

Using this method, it’s much easier to swat away wondering thoughts or random distractions because you know there’s a break coming up in the near future in which you can reflect. It’s a method to ‘trick’ your brain into always thinking the finish line is right around the corner. Try it out for yourself!

Midpoint

It’s time for the midpoint check in! Here’s what we’ve got:

what we’ve got

I think it looks pretty good so far! One of the best parts of working with mobile app development (or really, anything UI related) is that what you’re creating is immediately visible and shareable even with those who are not familiar with development. Compare this midpoint check-in to, say, a project where you’re working on a compiler.

The main takeaway you might have from that gif is that we’ve got most of the UI pieces in place, even if the back-end isn’t connected. This approach was intentional since it can be much easier to troubleshoot back-end issues with the front end working. In that category, we’ve got the recipe search screen, detail screen, meal planner screen and profile screen all set up and ready to populate with actual data.

The pantry screen and login screen are actually almost fully functional, with the login screen actually connected to our firebase backend, and the pantry accepting user input. The pantry does still need to be connected to firebase, though, and it does need some validation still.

All-in-all, I’m happy with what we’ve put out so far. I think we’re on track for meeting at least a satisfactory final product. Hoping to get at least a few stretch goals in place – like generating a shopping list based off missing ingredients or something like that.