One of the biggest breakthroughs I made in school was learning how to learn more efficiently. Many of my classmates would spend hours at a time sitting in the library or across campus staring at the same textbook and going through the same notes over and over. In the beginning I felt I was just being lazy or maybe I had ADHD or something because no matter how I tried, I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t sit down for more than 30 to 45 minutes with the same content no matter how hard I tried.
Many people looking to optimize their studying have heard of the Pomodoro Technique which basically boils down to studying in blocks of 25 to 30 minutes with breaks in between. I stumbled onto something very similar but with some additional rules to increase my efficiency to where I was making the same progress with 10 hours of study time distributed over a week as I had been with 15 to 20 hours a week over the course of a month. I found several tricks made the Pomodoro Technique substantially more useful, though not all are applicable to every situation. But first, let’s go over what the Pomodoro Technique is.
A Breakdown Of The Traditional Pomodoro Technique
The Pomodoro Technique basically breaks down to using a timer to set somewhere between 25 and 30 minutes for a task (called a Pomodoro), then recording a check mark on paper. Take a short break for 3 to 5 minutes if you have less than four checkmarks, otherwise, take a 15 to 30 minute break before crossing off the check marks and resuming the process as wanted. The act of recording what you’ve done and some kind of note-taking is worked in as well in order to keep track of what one is doing and to have a way to quantify the work being done.
This technique is very effective for standard learning as well as general time management. The method involves intentional recording and use of physical items (e.g. a timer) in order to work. The goal is to disrupt interruptions, so if one is interrupted in a Pomodoro, it is either resumed with notes or thrown out from the session. It does have some limitations however.
What Are The Limitations Of The Pomodoro Technique?
The Pomodoro Technique is a great way to get started with more efficient study, but it does have some minor flaws. These flaws aren’t inherent to the technique itself, but are instead things which have not been clearly defined. With a little extra definition and a few more situational techniques, one can tweak the Pomodoro Technique into a next level learning system.
One of the first plateaus from the Pomodoro Technique is the lack of flexibility for the sessions. I think these should be strongly observed in the beginning while getting down the rhythm, but eventually, you have to break out of the time constraint for certain content. Some material just can’t be split into 30 minute segments without wasting momentum. If it takes you 20 minutes to get going, then you get at best 10 minutes out of the session.
Working With A Decline Curve
When you focus on a task for a while, you begin to build up a degree of fatigue and naturally will have a decline in productivity. Your first hour (once you get in the rhythm) is probably going to be the best and each subsequent hour is going to slowly decline in efficiency until you get diminishing returns. Fatigue affects not just study efficiency but also general productivity.
The Pomodoro Technique takes this into account to a degree with its breaks, but I personally have found that these breaks aren’t enough to prevent the technique from beginning to show its limitations a few hours in. By tweaking a few variables and removing some rules when you know why the rules exist, and adding a few rules when you know why they can help, you can keep the decline curve from impacting your work or study near as much.
Session Times
The fixed time for sessions is extremely efficient early on when you are not familiar with the technique. The whole point of the Pomodoro Technique is to learn basic time management for learning or work, not so much to focus on optimizing study. Since the technique is more generic, there are more things which can be nailed down for study purposes and can be tweaked once you get the overall rhythm of the method internalized.
Certain tasks just don’t fit into 25 to 30 minute sessions. Reading certain materials may require reading other materials to prepare. I have had classes where to get into the reading you have to read an article or two to understand the intended context, or cross reference between multiple books. If you split your sessions too finely, you run the risk of losing focus. You also may want to avoid doing exactly four sessions depending on the topic. If there are only 3 ways to split it, you may not want to repeat anything. You can add a review session, but some content just doesn’t need to be reviewed after every cycle.
Per this article, the average person has about 20 minutes of attention, but obviously it can take a few minutes to get into focus. Some tasks are compounded together so you need to multitask and balance focus. I will combine certain sessions of this technique into one in order to get through more complicated readings. This is more efficient as you probably only spend about 20 minutes or so with the material, but you need a larger warm-up time to get to that point. For certain readings, I might team 2 or 3 sessions together so that I get effectively 40 to 60 minutes of productivity after the 20 or so minutes to get into the groove. These sessions merit a few extra breaks in between and a long break at the end however.
Another trick is setting a more flexible end to a time. I try to aim for 22 to 25 minutes as the fixed time with a few minutes worked in at the end so that task has a few minutes for me to extend my session if I hit somewhere I am close to finishing. This means that you aim for 22 minutes and have a 3 minute buffer, or a 25 minute session and a 5 minute buffer which may or may not be used for a given session. This little bit of flexibility can help make a session a little more natural if a book is targeted for shorter or longer sessions depending or if you get stuck on something and only need a little bit of extra time.
Session Rotation
Farmers rotate crops for the same reason you should rotate session content, if you do the same thing over and over, you burn out your greatest asset. I try to rotate sessions in an organic sense without a huge number of fixed rules. I don’t want to pair the same few things together if I’m working on multiple tasks, but at the same time, I tend to put things together which are tangential. I will also contradict this and put certain tasks together because they are similar, but then rotate them in larger blocks.
If you’re working on learning a language using things like in my article here (or here if you prefer Medium), you will be using multiple sources. Let’s pretend you split your language learning into pronunciation, textbook lessons, vocabulary, and grammar. You would want to consider putting vocabulary and pronunciation together as each one would pair well but they don’t tread on one another. You may want to pair vocabulary with grammar because they are two different aspects of the whole and touch on each other but not directly. A textbook lesson could be combined with any of them depending on what you’re working on.
By rotating the content to not be something exactly the same every single time, you avoid burnout. I found that jumping between topics which are affected by one another helped, but by picking something with a completely different focus, I could combine parts of the same subject without getting worn out as quickly. This material can be further cemented by working a review session at the end before a long break.
For another example, one could look at something like a technical certificate. There is the test to worry about, the theory, and then how it may relate to your company if they are sponsoring the certificate. Test taking skills probably won’t relate to how you use it at your company, but the theory will relate to both. You would want to order your sessions with the test, then the theory, and then how it relates to your company, or else the theory, the test, then another part of the theory, and then how it relates to your company.
By rotating the sessions, you avoid getting stuck in the same topic after topic. You also strengthen your understanding of how things go together if you choose to follow an order which builds off of each topic. Exactly which works best depends on your learning style and the nature of the content you are working on, and there isn’t a one size fits all approach. It takes a bit of trial and error to nail down what works best, but once you do, you’ll find yourself staying sharper for much longer.
Sleep On It
If you work all day, this doesn’t really work, but I use this technique when I need to get serious about learning. Sleep is believed to be involved with memory consolidation which is essential for learning. By adding a short 30 to 40 minute nap in between ever four or so short sessions, you can help refresh yourself and you will remember more information after each cycle.
One thing I typically would add to this method is a review session at the end of each cycle to go over each topic covered over the cycle in order to cement the material. You can also add a review of the previous cycle after waking from the nap to further cement the material, though this can be too much with some content or can slow down progress depending. By combining the functions of sleep with your studying, you can stay more refreshed once you get used to the method rather than if you just took a break.
This method doesn’t really work if you have a family and a full time job, but it is very useful in college, or when learning quickly and efficiently is the most important thing. The naps can also allow you to shave off some time sleeping to stay up later or wake up earlier once you get used to them. This is extremely useful for high stress, high paced learning situations as it grants even more time to keep with the material.
Taking A Break
Many people underestimate the importance of breaks in learning. A few minutes to recollect yourself can make your learning more efficient for hours. Make sure to take adequate breaks and even extend the few minutes if you find yourself chewing on the previous session. The fixed time in the original method is to avoid letting people use their breaks to procrastinate, but once you are used to the method, you can judge your own focus and don’t need the leash as much.
Another way to take a break without actually taking a break is to combine tasks like working out and studying, or cleaning and studying, or any other combination of something which does not require huge mental focus and your reason to manage your. If you have the access to a very close gym, it can be worth working in a quick session or a quick walk, jog, run, or bike ride to break up some study sessions. This gets the blood flowing and helps completely shift gears on what you’re doing. If you combine intense and trivial tasks at work, you can use this to focus on important pieces for a few sessions, then a session of paper shuffling or similar.
The Pomodoro Technique was originally made as a time management technique and not a study method. By using this aspect, one can combine other tasks into studying by treating learning as just a piece of the time to be managed. This helps shift gears and manage time in a way that can help further pace one when studying. Even just a session or two completely unrelated to the focus task every couple hours can contribute to keeping the momentum without burning out. When I go for a bike ride after a couple hours of studying, it gives me time to mentally process everything which has happened.
Putting It All Together
Once you internalize the technique and why you’re using it, you can start working these tricks in where relevant. I use floating sessions which have an arbitrary number of minutes after, but not to exceed 10 for each session where the content is not consistent. A session may be targeted for 25 minutes but may end after 20 minutes if I can reach a satisfactory end by then, or it might be 35 minutes if I can’t. Breaks are held as extremely important, and break sessions are worked in to entirely shift gears. I also work in session rotation for everything. I also add in a nap after work typically to split up the day so I am more efficient in the evening.
Once you learn the time management aspect and know you won’t abuse the exceptions to the rules, you can take the technique up a level. By being more flexible, you can work within your internal time constraints instead of within a fixed constraint targeted at the majority of people. You can extend sessions as necessary and even cross target tasks to add in more breaks from material. Naps and workouts can help further cement the material and affect your functioning in later sessions which can help eke out more productivity for each hour spent.
The original technique is your foundation to build off of and not necessarily the complete package. Expand it where you need to, and keep to the foundation where you need to. Make the technique yours where you can and where it makes sense to, but don’t knock down any load bearing walls. Some of the rules will still need to be rules depending on what works for you, but others can be changed as necessary. Know yourself and you’ll know what makes sense.
Conclusion
The biggest takeaway is that this method is flexible once you learn what not to be flexible with. As you apply these techniques, you will get more efficient at using the system to optimize your learning. A mixture of content staging for sessions, flexible sessions, and more sane breaks leads to flexibility not in the traditional Pomodoro Technique which can be augmented when one has internalized the method. The mix of staged content in sessions, and sane breaks where necessary also make you able to stay fresher and more efficient for longer, getting even more out of the technique. These few minor changes can enhance the technique and lead to even greater progress with virtually no extra work.
Image by Nattanan Kanchanaprat from Pixabay