Why?
I am fully aware of the technique called Pomodoro. You focus for a small amount of time like 35 or 45 minutes and then you take a small 5 to 10 minutes break as a reward. The reason why the Pomodoro technique works wonders for most of us is the fact that there is always a reward waiting for us at the end of the focus minutes.
But this technique did not work for me and I was never aware of that fact until now. I simply set an alarm for 45 minutes and started to work. After 45 minutes the alarm rang and I felt the need to continue working on the subject I was so focused on. But then I was also being constantly reminded by my subconscious brain the "hey. it's time for your break. Get up and just take a walk." So I started walking for the sake of just taking the break. After 10 minutes of walking when I sat on my chair again to get started with the unfinished work, I felt like the sluggishness inside me towards working again that was not present in me before taking the break.
The reason why this happened was that I was deep inside that state of mind where I just wanted to work. But just because I had set this goal "just a 10-minute break" and that small goal was for that moment easier for me to do than just continue on working became the nail int he coffin.
The solution to this problem is very simple. Just get yourself in that flow of working and never set any goals for taking break EXPLICITLY. We are humans with a normal life and there will be typical distractions and things that you will need to do. So that will eventually turn into a break for you. The thing here is that we don't actually need to break all the time. Humans were always the ones best known for survival. Our ancestors knew how to survive an hour sand storm without dying. And the struggle we are facing today is just to sit down in a comfy chair and focus on our study for hours.
So for all these reasons I have decided to give a value to this "hours" variable, 4 hours. If I have to go to work on a day, I will just one 4 hours block of work. No distractions will be allowed and after I am done with that 4 hours of studying. I won't touch a book. I won't work at all. I will just enjoy myself till I go to sleep. And If I don't have to go to work, then I will just do two 4 hours block a day and the rest of the rule remains unbroken. One of the two 4 hours blocks will be done early in the morning after my workout session and the other one will be done in the evening till night.
9-1 am and 3-7 pm
Maximum efficiency
Because once you are in that state of mind where you are just focused on completing the thing that you are doing, you just need to some excuse to keep you from leaving the work. Push you to do it, continue on. That push and the excuse becomes this 4 hours of working goal. You know that you aren't done with your work. I know that you can do a little more and then you also know that you have planned for working for 4 hours and you plenty of time left to reach the time limit. So why not just keep going. The is a way of positively luring your mind into doing something smoothly with minimum resistance.
Minimize breaks
You are not taking any small 10 minutes walks or small game sessions before you are completely done with your work. Whenever you take the smallest amount of break in between your work to "soothe your mind and body", you will lose focus and you find it harder to get back into that flow. So in this way, there is now hard struggles like that.
Increase the free time
I have a 9-5 job. For now, it is not a daily job. Some days I have to work from home and I never know which is going to be. I get back at 6 or 7 pm. I can start studying at 8:30 pm. So until 12:30 pm, I do not intend to get up or do anything. It might sound harsh but the truth is I am utilizing my time a lot better in this way than I used to by using Pomodoro. I used to watch more youtube videos than real work. In between those studying hours I take my time to eat and maybe go to market for anything I might need the next day or so. As I said before, every one of us must have their basic life needs and that can not be ignored at any cost. So don't care much about doing things just the way I wanted to do them.
- Plan the night before I always take time to plan the things I might want to focus on tomorrow before going to sleep. I use my calendar to block out the things I need to be focusing on and in this way I just won't need to face any resistance while getting into the flow of studying. I just know what I need to work on by looking at my calendar. You can use a tet book to right the things that you want to first thing int he morning and you won't need to think about them in the morning.
- Stay seated Not getting up is another harsh decision you might think but the fact that getting up and losing focus is extremely related are also in your knowledge. Just don't get up until you are done with your 4 hours of focus unless there is some absolute need.
- Hide your phone God. Just hide it. It might sound stupid by we humans, stupid modern humans to be precise and we have grown a need inside our self. The need to be checking your phone randomly for notifications. You can not deny the fact that a small noise from your phone makes you feel like you are missing out on something super important. Though most of the time you really aren't and you know it. So just keep your phone away from your self, from your desk. Lock it up in your closet and this will vastly improve the process.
- Setting standards for yourself After an hour of focus just ask to tell yourself that you have been seating on this chair for 1 hour straight and you are not finished with the job yet. You can just repeat seating on this chair doing what you were doing for one more hour. It's not that hard and you can do it once more. Just once more, And convincing yourself into doing it won't hurt anyone. You will eventually understand that you always had more in your self than you ever imagined. You just underestimated your standards. Convincing yourself to do things is the key.
You are always one step behind from being successful.
I was not planning in writing a full-fledged THING like this one today. But Writing this is what I think is just a way of helping myself. This writing is going to guide me tomorrow and days after tomorrow.
This is the fantastic advantage of doing things for yourself rather than doing it to please others. If you read this through and through, let me know if you have any suggestions regarding my ideas. I think you must have some different ideas conflicting with mine and I am always up for receiving your comments on