Laziness, meetings and doing pleasant stuff

[pxt]

I downloaded the book and had a quick read. It looks good, I'm planning to give it a try as I often get tired and bored if I don't have meetings to break up the day. Do you also do the pomodoro tracking and estimation or just use the timer?

On the estimating side, I have created timeslots in my (Things) app that are pomodoros. So I have: 10mins, PD25, PD50, PD75 etc, representing multiples of the 25min time slices. When I create a task, I assign it one of these and then I can select a task based on how many of these I have left in the day. Most of my next actions are PD25 while those requiring more thought are usually PD100.

On the tracking side, I have a rough idea of what a productive day looks like for me. If I get two major cycles done in a day ( 25/5 x 4 = one major cycle ~ 2 hours ), then thats four hours spent in focused solo effort, with the rest of the day dealing with other people and processing.

If my progress is disappointing, then I track my pomodoros for a few days to see what the cause is. If I need to hammer a project harder, then I'll go for 6 hours in a day, defend that time by saying 'no', and track this at the end of every day until I'm clear. I just do this on a postit on my wall, so it's pretty informal.