We have grown up with this phrase, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”.
Have you heard of the advantages of a handful of tomatoes?
PhD students often discover new heights of procrastination during the course. More than what they could every think they were capable of. A lot of us have this really weird and sudden compulsive urge to finish up any assigned task at the earliest. However, very rarely do we feel the same kind of urge to meet deadlines that are assigned for PhD work. There is some weird reason for it and I have found it difficult to comprehend all these years. I have tried some of the new time management techniques and I am going to discuss them with you here.
One of the most straight forward and blunt technique that I have come across is the POMODORO TECHNIQUE. It was developed by Francesco Cirillo and has named it behind a timer that is tomato shaped. Each one of the Pomodoro in the technique is nothing but a representation of the unit of time and then upon each one of the accomplishments in the stipulated time, you get a break. The technique worked very well for me in many my tasks that were related to editing chapters for books and papers. It also worked when I had to start writing from a scratch. I have my doubts though, about this activity working in the case of reading assignments or listening and writing notes. It supplements the task by alarm and in high concentration activities, alarms are nothing but distractions and end up doing more harm than good.
I want to discuss with you some specific benefits of this technique:
Adding up small little accomplishments, it increases your confidence level and keeps the motivation higher for the next day
When you are focused on only one activity at a specific point of time, it would make you more systematic and attentive to details
A continuous application of this time management technique actually would acquaint you of your pattern of concentration. It would help you to get a grab of your settling time and performance pattern so that you could cash it better the next time.
Since you have to perform in a regulated time, it helps you to understand what you can do realistically and what exactly wishful thinking. it would bring down you disappointments and start each day by having more objective and achievable goals.
I would definitely recommend you to try this and see how you can benefit from this technique. HAPPY POMODORO