For myself, the consistency was awesome. I applied it to work, leisure, studying, socializing - everything. Before this, I would binge. Go out for hours at a time, play games for hours at a time...I didn't track/measure anything.
I started having more time to accomplish my goals (because I was deliberately making time to do so) and I also got my hobbies/leisure activities under control.
But about a year ago, I would get frustrated when I would be getting into my state of flow just about when the timer went off. I decided I wanted more time in my flow state, so I decided to not follow the technique when I was doing work-related things.
Now, I only use it when I know I'm going to do something leisurely - mostly video games. It now serves as a way for me to avoid getting into the "flow" for things that I really should be cognizant of, while freeing up time to be in the flow of things I'm passionate about.
1) I have a maximum sustainable rate of about 8 pomodoros (4 hours) high focus work per day. This can be temporarily overridden, but I work much less the following days.
2) Bimodal days seem to work best for me. One big block in the morning, followed by a long-ish lunch, and then another big block in the afternoon. Similar to PG's essay on maker vs. manager schedule.
3) Having many small unrelated tasks is inversely correlated with number of pomodoros completed. Usually I get the most pomodoros in when I have 2 big tasks for the day.
On a productive day, I can get about five 50-min pomodoros.
The technique helps me A LOT psychologically. Once that timer starts, I do not do anything else from what I have named my pomodoro. It helps me focus my attention and keeps me from drifting off to HN or reddit or whatever.
That said, the standard pomodoro time of 20 minutes is WAY too short for programming tasks. The technique itself is solid though.
I've always found the estimation bit to be tricky, because its viability depends hugely on 1) the kind of work you're doing and 2) whether you're running an ongoing planning deficit or not. To point 1, the less well-defined your work is, the harder pom-level estimation is. For example, consider a task that boils down to "learn how to apply, new, complex set of APIs to solve problem X", but might just be written as "implement wireflow 2a". At some point, despite planning effort, you end up with tasks that are indivisible atoms with high variability. I don't necessarily feel it's worth putting a huge amount of time learning to precisely estimate those, if it's even possible. (I'd love to hear counter-examples from folks, tho.) My personal approach is really to try to bubble up overall variability/uncertainty to a higher-level than counting-the-poms, then mostly use poms to maintain focus/velocity.
As to point 2, part of the Pomodoro Technique is supposed to be doing a planning pom at the start of the day, and that's really the minimum. Sometimes that's not sufficient (e.g. you have higher-level planning/workflow problems), or sometimes your planning skills just need work. If you're at least doing your planning pom, that gives you time to reflect upon and begin to address these higher level issues.
I have lots of fires to put out at a moments notice. I think it would work well for people that are able to focus on one project at a time.
That's basically it. I'm counting the number of reasonably solid starts into "flow" I make each day. That seems to be enough to make me a lot more productive.
It's incredibly easy to procrastinate when we have Facebook, HN, WhatsApp, email - whatever, but I know if I start a pomodoro it's only ever 25, 22, 17, 9, 3 minutes until I can take 'reward' myself with the aforementioned for a few minutes. It's easy to push through knowing I only _have_ to do (at most) 25 minutes more work. And once I'm rolling, it's a lot easier to continue.
I use Harvest throughout the day to check how much _actual_ work I'm getting done. This helps me make better estimates of times and costs (as well as see the days I'm most and least productive).
This. I find that if I am not sure where to start, or not in the mood, using the technique helps me get started and keep focused. If I know what I'm going to be working and what do next, I can just jump into it.
Aside from that, I don't follow anything about Pomodoro specifically.
One issue with Pomodoro is taking 1 session, then 1 break. In my opinion, one should flex this "rule" in flow. It's more valuable to do, eg 3x uninterrupted sessions followed by a break of 1-3x your normal break length than 3 * (work, break).
I also prefer 15-minute blocks.
B.F. Skinner, the esteemed psychologist known for his work in behaviorism, reinforcement, and conditioning is known for using a similar approach.
Nowadays I use an app called Forest, it provides an element of encouragement of how many trees have I planted and how can I get other trees :-D
There are few important aspects that contribute to being able to continue easily: - you know the Pomodoro ends at a specific time, so you can properly close, make notes, etc. - because you stop 'in the middle' you actually feel eager to get back to it. (contrary to normal breaks where you probably stopped because you didn't feel like working anymore)
In general I believe it works because you rely less on flow. Flow is great, but it also comes and goes. If you can easily get into your flow and stay there for hours, you probably don't need this, but for those weeks when it doesn't come naturally, this can really work.
- Interruptions definitely affect my feeling of accomplishment and may affect my results. I find even the smallest external interruption or moment of weakness triggers my internal critic, resulting in an arguably more detrimental cascade of self-criticism. An avalanche of blog posts argue that these minor interruptions dramatically impact my productivity for other reasons. I totally buy this anecdotally but won't attempt to justify it since I suspect most people here agree anyway.
- Sometimes 25 minutes just doesn't cut it. I especially chafe at the forced 5 minute break during my 1.5 hour period pre-standup where I haven't eaten at all and am caffeinated. I know the creator of the technique and blog authors like Martin claim that I should be able to slice all of my tasks such that I don't need longer than 25 minutes, but I disagree. While I enjoy holding the state of a program in my head and occasionally finding the zone, I'm willing to acknowledge Martin's overstated but partly true point that the zone can induce tunnel vision and the downsides that go along with that. However, I've also observed that 3 break-interleaved chunks of work can zap my energy more one large block of work would have.
- How do people deal with waiting for things that take longer than a minute? I've recently been working with jobs that take multiple hours to run. It's difficult to both schedule my Pomodoros such that I have a free one to check the result of this job. Even worse, the validation of the job can take between a minute if it succeeded and hours if it failed. This makes budgeting hard.
- Should I budget Pomodoros for checking email and Slack or include that in my breaks? Ideally, I'd use breaks to recharge and not context-switch between communication platforms. But, while I'm not an always on, 10-minute to respond to any email guy, a consistent multiple hour time-to-respond to any communication is a recipe for face-to-face interruptions in the age of the open office.
- Should I include lower level planning in my break or 25-minute chunk? I often find going from high-level task statement to knowing exactly what I need to do requires a few minutes to orient myself. I'd be fine including this in my Pomodoros except this orienting can involve firing off a quick question to a colleague or searching through my emails / Slack messages. Maybe I just need to get better at gathering requirements beforehand...
To be clear, I'm not putting down the technique. I suspect any time management strategy would reveal the issues I described above and that we simply don't hear about the pains of actually implementing a system beyond a week of casual usage (see any blog post with a just-so title like "I Adopted <> and It Changed My Productivity Forever" as an example).
As I look back at my bullets, I've realized I'm mostly looking for wisdom from some seasoned Pomodoro veterans. I see one or two people on this thread who fit this description, but overall I'm disappointed with the ratio of people who want to sell the technique or have tried it to people who have used it consistently for months or years. This seems to be a common problem among productivity techniques.
Meta-comment: I recognize this comment could be condensed, and "if I had time I would have written a shorter letter" (http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/).