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Comment by danohuiginn | Hacker News Reader

The 'unnatural' breaks you get from Pomodoro do have some advantages, though. If you use 'natural' breaks -- when you have finished a task, or got stuck -- you are breaking at precisely the point where it will be hardest to resume work.

When your break is on a fixed schedule, you're more likely to have something left half-finished. That makes it much easier to jump back in 5 minutes later.

Personally I gain more from the easy resumability than I lose by not having the break-for-abstract-thinking which you describe. Doubtless this varies massively between from person to person.

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> when you have finished a task, or got stuck -- you are breaking at precisely the point where it will be hardest to resume work.

This might make sense from a procrastination point of view, but my point is that you should stop there to revise your strategy so that it will be _easier_ to resume. But with pomorado you just have to grind through because your 20mins isn't up yet... To me that seems inefficient.

When I say stuck I don't mean a hard challenging or complex part, I mean you really are stuck and that's why you should stop, because you aren't making significant progress and it's inefficient. You don't necessarily need to give it deep thought like I suggested, sometimes simply having a break is enough to give you a fresh perspective once you go back.

Anyway, it's all subjective, not only to the individual but probably also the task.

> This might make sense from a procrastination point of view, but my point is that you should stop there to revise your strategy so that it will be _easier_ to resume. But with pomorado you just have to grind through because your 20mins isn't up yet... To me that seems inefficient.

I think you people use different definitions of "break". What you (tomxor) describe as "revise your strategy" is probably a task that the other person thinks should be done within the 20 pomodoro minutes, and then a break is not "stop your actual work to think about your work instead" but rather "play angry birds" or "have a water cooler chat".

At least to me, if I get stuck but know that I have time left in my 20 minutes, I am more likely to switch to rethinking my strategy than if I feel like I have the option of taking a break right now.

Maybe you are right... I think i'm also forgetting there are many different degrees of "stuck" :P . Although most "micro stucks" in my experience definitely fit into a break with your mind in diffuse mode, but at the other extreme it needs some serious and prolonged thought that could well be considered a task in itself.

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