Enforced Focus

Just sharing a life hack™ that I find really handy, especially during times when focus is hard to come by.

The Pomodora technique is a method for time management and focus. A lot of you have probably heard of it. The gist of it is that you work hard and focus for 25 minutes and then reward yourself with a 5 minute break.

At first this might seem like a lot of wasted time with all these breaks but it really is amazing how much these breaks help you concentrate for that 25 minutes of work. Also, the 5 minute break doesn't necessarily have to be wasting time; I try to force myself to only check and respond to emails or slack during the break time, this allows me to focus on coding for 25 minutes, take 5 minutes to handle communication and give my brain a break, then jump back into code.

One tool that has been incredibly valuable to enforce this is Pomodoro by Steve Klabnik. It's a simple Ruby script that will redirect time sucking websites except for the 5 minute break periods. Use of this script helps push me over that self control ledge and forces focus.