Ways To Write, Part 2: The Pomodoro Technique

This way of writing is courtesy of one of my current Screenwriting Master Class students Matt Sinclair-Foreman who along with his fellow writers is just wrapping up a successful 6-week Prep course. Matt emailed our group a few weeks back with this:

Via a writer’s blog I was checking out, I heard about this time management concept called the Pomodoro Technique. As someone who finds self-directed work for long periods of time can be challenging, and is always looking for a way to make work a better experience, I was intrigued, especially when I heard how many people have dug it. Maybe some of you already know about it/use it. I’ve been using it for a few days and I’ve found it very powerful.

It’s deceptively simple. Instead of setting yourself a task and then getting at it over an indeterminate period of time, you break your work time into uninterrupted twenty-five minute periods with five minute breaks in between. And every three or four ‘Pomodoros’, which is what they call the 25 min sessions, you take a longer break.

At the end of every Pomodoro, you refer to a list of tasks you have drawn up before you started work and track your progress. Both the breaks and the progress tracking are critical, and highly useful. The former allows your mind to re-integrate and process information that has come up in the work session, and the progress tracking gives you a regular ‘moment’ to look back on where you are and assess if you need to change tack, are getting close to the end, and so forth.

Anyway, I’ve been finding it awesome. I don’t focus on where I am in the day anymore, just on the next Pomodoro. The twenty-five minute session is an awesome period to try and focus for. I almost never feel ‘tapped out’ at the end of one, so it makes going back for the next round very easy. Also, the progress tracking allows me to see the shape of the project in a way I’ve never experienced before. And breaks are nice too, and I generally don’t take enough of them.

Wow, this sounds like a sales pitch. I guess I’m just excited.

Anyway, I’ve attached the free ebook that outlines the process.

Here’s the link to the blog I first heard about it from:

http://heywriterboy.blogspot.com/2009/10/amidst-bluster-time-for-tomato.html

Here’s the website:

http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

And here’s a link to the timer app I’ve been using (it’s the one the guy mentions in his blog):

http://www.focusboosterapp.com/

I hope this is a cool discovery for some of you too!

I don’t know how many of you know the TV writer Jane Espenson, but if you follow her on Twitter, every so often she’ll invite people online to join her in a 30-minute writing sprint. Similar concept to the Pomodoro.

Apart from jamming through whatever pages of a script you can knock out in 25 or 30 minutes, I think the Pomodoro would be more valuable during the prep-writing phase. At least for me, my goal when I’m writing pages is to find my way into my story world and stay there as long as I can. That can be hours at a time. I don’t want any interruptions, just let me commune with my characters as I work my way through scenes.

However when you are breaking the story in the prep phase, I can totally see how the Pomodoro approach can work. For example, let’s say you’re doing character development and you have six primary characters in your story. What a great way to take a crack at them: 25 minutes with the first character, 5 minute break, 25 minutes with the second character, 5 minute break, and so on. I’d just close my eyes each time and let my fingers do a direct download from my imagination, what I was hearing each character say, seeing what they did, dashing off my impressions of them, and so on.

Has anyone ever used a technique like the Pomodoro before?

To download the free 44-page booklet about the Pomodoro technique, go here.

To check out the Prep course Matt and five other writers just took with me through Screenwriting Master Class, go here. By the way, here is a testimonial about the Prep class from another one of its participants James Tichenor:

The Prep class has given me a set of practical tools to use to take the bare glimmer of a concept to outline in six weeks. I have every intention of repeating the class and building up an inventory of stories ready to take to first draft.

Tomorrow’s Ways Of Writing post: One page per day.

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