Show HN: An accurate implementation of Pomodoro Technique

flowkeeper.org

4 points·ity75303··3 comments

Flowkeeper is an old-school desktop application, which implements rather rigorously what Francesco Cirillo described in his original "Pomodoro Technique" book.

Some of the examples:

- It makes breaks unconditional. Aborting a break voids the corresponding pomodoro.

- There are no half or quarter-pomodoros. You can’t mark a pomodoro as completed prematurely, only void it.

- You can record interruptions.

- The tasks are estimated visually, as in the book, and the app distinguishes between planned and unplanned stuff, so that you can analyze it retrospectively.

- You can have several backlogs and move work items between them.

I'm the author, will appreciate your feedback and improvement ideas.

Love the pomodoro technique to focus, but why do you think that a simple timer isn't enough?

The timer is one part of it, and indeed, a simple kitchen timer is all you really need. But most of the Technique is about tracking your work through backlogs, estimating it, and (most importantly) analyzing it retrospectively: https://archive.org/details/ThePomodoroTechnique/ThePomodoro... It's like a personal mini-Scrum with planning and retrospectives. Flowkeeper mainly automates that "paperwork" part.

Also, Pomodoro Technique requires discipline, and most of the simple timers don't help you much. For example, if you just cancel a pomodoro (or a short break) -- nothing happens, while in Flowkeeper it is more visible, you get an interruption recorded. There's a bunch of small things like that, which motivate the user to do Pomodoro _right_. When you do it right, it is much more efficient.

Just to be clear -- a kitchen timer and a sheet of paper is enough. I just wanted to do the _exact_ same thing for my desktop.

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