Anyone read it? Is it worth reading? 44 pages is pretty lengthy if it's just the usual masturbatory self-improvement stuff (but I'm willing to believe that it's not, if someone can summarise why it is better than the other stuff)...
1. use a kitchen timer
2. minimize interruptions
3. work in iterations of 25 minutes with 5 minute breaks
4. change it up sometimes longer or shorter breaks longer or shorter work chunks.
5. plan your day
6. change your plans as needed.
That's pretty much it.
//Pomodoro=tomato //his first kitchen timer was shaped like one.
You track your interruptions. It is similar to the "trusted system" in the GTD system. It is also similar to meditative techniques where you let go of extraneous thoughts instead of trying to actively suppress them.
By the way, I've only read the first two chapters which is maybe 10 pages long. I haven't bothered to read the rest of it, though I'll probably add it as a pomodoro. I don't really plan on using it in a team setting and I was itching to get started on stuff after reading it.
As for the kitchen timer, I wrote shell two shell script that tells mplayer to play the Final Fantasy 6 harp theme after 25 minutes using the 'at' daemon.
It works well, but gets boring after a while... I've found it works best when you're drowning under a sea of small tasks.
In my opinion, no self-help guide applies for everyone; we all have our own strengths and vices.
It seems that this one is designed to help build concentration and minimize interruptions by defining concrete "work unit" blocks, thus helping to build discipline in fighting off distractions (internal & external).
I don't feel strongly about his views on the perception of time, but it's not that important to the whole article.
Well, in my case, when I'm doing a long task that I enjoy I tend to enter an obsessive mode that's far more productive if uninterrupted.
This one seems to work particularly well for me precisely beacause my perception of time fits better with the sequenced than the abstract. I also dislike multitasking and I've been practicing concentration exercises and catching internal interruptions outside of work anyways. I can leverage a lot of things I already do. Not everyone is going to be able to do that.
Seems good, but I won't promise that I will fully read it later :p