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There’s a concept in psychological literature, kind of gross, called attention residue. I want to create an image here: Imagine your sleeper sofa. Maybe it’s down in the family room and you don’t use it much. You go downstairs, take the cushions off, and you pull the sleeper sofa out. You know those joints where the metal parts meet? They’re covered with this greasy machine oil—and there’s probably cat hair mixed in and maybe some Goldfish cracker crumbs.
There, that’s the image: That’s attention residue.
And that’s what it’s like when you shift from task to task and then pop the clutch and come back to the first task. Then you answer a text message and then you come back to the second task. All of that multi-tasking creates attention residue. Every time you shift from one task to another you’re creating this greasy, sluggish attention residue. And the way around that is to stop multi-tasking, and just do one thing at a time.
When you’re doing eight or nine things at once, you’re a certain kind of powerful. But when you do just one thing for a focused period of time, you’re incredibly powerful. If you haven’t tried something like this already, I’d suggest you at least experiment with it.
The Pandora Pomodoro
Now let's talk about the Pandora Pomodoro. "Pomodoro” is the Italian word for tomato, and the Pomodoro Technique starts with a timer—the one that the technique's inventor uses is adorable, it looks like a tomato. You wind it up and just work on a boring or difficult task for 25 minutes, followed by a mandatory five-minute break. So, essentially, a “Pomodoro” is a 25-minute increment of work. You don’t have to use this adorable plastic timer, of course: Just drop a free Pomodoro app on your phone. The point is to work on something for just 25 minutes, just that one thing. If you get a great idea for a screenplay, make a note somewhere, then come right back to the task—just that task.
At the end of 25 minutes, you’ll hear a beep which is your cue to stop the task—right there. You honor the end of the Pomodoro: You get up and you take a break. Typically it’s a five-minute break. After that, if you want to do another Pomodoro on the original task or a new one, that’s up to you.
The point of the Pomodoro technique is not to trick you into working for three hours. It’s just to see what you can get done in one focused period. The Pomodoro Technique is popular among ADHD coaches, writers, coders, and others who struggle with day-to-day focus or need to blast through a super-human concentration task. Plenty have written about the technique—in blogs, apps, and books. Lots of my clients also tell me that working or studying in Pomodoro units works for them.
The Pandora Part
Here’s the twist—what I call the Pandora Pomodoro. You know that if you’re not using the paid version of Pandora Internet radio, Spotify, or another similar service, there are commercials. These commercials come about every 15 or 20 minutes and are usually pretty brief—something like a minute.
So the Pandora Pomodoro technique is this: Simply work in your office with some kind of Internet radio on your phone or laptop. As long as the music is playing, you’re going to work on a single focused task. Don’t watch the clock, and don’t engage with other side tasks—until a commercial. When you hear the commercial you are free to stop the task. In fact, I recommend that you do stop your efforts during the commercial. Get up, step away from your work. (I like to do some brief breathing exercises or some really terrible juggling—I’ve been practicing for a year now and I’ve not gotten any better—to work with my hands and my eyes and to take my mind off a challenging cognitive demand.)
At the end of the commercial, return to your task. The Pandora Pomodoro is really good when you have long chunks of unstructured time because the technique can help you pull back before you go down, say, some Instagram rabbit hole. And the Pandora Pomodoro is really good for boring, difficult, or non-preferred tasks. It's for when you have to do something you really need to do but really really don’t want to do.
It’s also good for those times at the end of the day when you’re the little engine that literally can’t even. You face that pile of billing or you look at that stack of IEPs that you have to slog through and you just think, “I can’t.” Well, don’t. Don’t do it. Just do one Pomodoro. Just commit to one brief push and don’t stop until you get to the commercial break.
Try it. Tell me what works for you. Good luck!
LinkedIn Image Credit: Sata Production/Shutterstock
