To be honest I had never heard of the Pomodoro Technique before and I tried it only after I read your mail. And I am glad I did. My execution has possibly improved (I am a procrastinator par excellence:)) but more importantly I have a much better feel of how much work I can handle in a day.
I have tried to implement the Pomodoro technique in MLO and this is what I have done. I have used flags. I have assumed that on a perfect day I can execute 12 pomodoros and have enabled 12 flags naming them Pomo1 to Pomo 12. I also have a Planning Pomo flag and a Recording pomo flag. My "activity inventory list" is the MLO outline view. For my "activity for today list" I have enabled a view that shows me tasks that are due upto today + tasks I complete today. The filter I have used is Action Filter : All In Advanced Filter * Rule 1 : DueDateTime on or before Today (AND) * Rule 2 : Active Action is True (OR) * Rule 3 : CompletedDateTime on Today In Group /Sort * Group by Flag While in this view I decide which tasks would get done in which pomodoro and apply the appropriate pomo flag to the task. I capture the estimated time (in effort area) against each task. As soon as the sum of task times against a flag reaches 30 min, I assign the next pomo flag to the subsequent task and so on. What about tasks that take more than 1 pomodoro to complete? What I am doing is that I create a duplicate of the task and assign the task to the next pomodoro flag. In any case I try and break up tasks so that each task is not more than 1 pomodoro long,so this is not such a huge issue. Recording : I have enabled several views which looks at completed tasks by Top Parent (The top parent in my outline view captures my broad goals in life (Areas of Focus)), by day, by project etc that gives me a view to how i am doing and whether I am being productive enough. Going over these views is basically what I do as a part of my recording & review. If the time I take is very different from my estimate, I capture it in the notes area. It has issues because deviations from estimates being captured in notes which does not show in the column view. However since most of my tasks are 1 pomodoro or less, the deviations are not too great. However this is a weak area and I do not know how to solve it. Another thing that I have done is I have enabled contexts based on the type of activity like @Call, @Learn, @Mail etc and try to bunch similar activity types in a pomodoro. regards Aditya On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 5:39 AM, Richard Collings <[email protected]>wrote: > Yes - so I gather but as a peripheral member of that community, it had > completely passed me by up until now. > > One of the things that I liked about it from an initial scan was the fact > that he draws on the work of a range of other interesting people one of whom > is Tom Gilb who, it could be argued, originated many of the agile concepts > 15 years before they became fashionable and who has been one of my guiding > lights since the mid 1980's. > > Are you using MLO in a Pomodoro sort of way? If so, I would be really > interested to hear how. > > > > -----Original Message----- > *From:* [email protected] [mailto: > [email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Mark Levison > *Sent:* 13 November 2009 1:41 a > *To:* [email protected] > *Subject:* [MLO] Re: The Pomodoro Technique > > I and much of the Agile Software Development community have been using it > for years. > > On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 5:18 PM, Richard C <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> Has anybody come across this time management technique. It looks >> really interesting and aligns with some stuff I have been trying to do >> with MLO - namely short term planning (ie: for the next few days) >> which GTD and other time management just don't seem to address (but I >> am not an expert) >> >> The website is here http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ >> >> I think there are any featues in MLO that could be used to work with >> this technique (or visa versa). However, the key thing that is >> missing from MLO is a better mechanism for recording estimated time >> and for adding up time. >> >> The Pomodoro technique uses 'Pomodoros' as its unit of effort >> estimation and time measurement which are half hour blocks (go to the >> website to find out why he calls them pomodoros) For each >> significant task, you estimate how many of these time blocks it will >> take to complete (eg this is a 4 Pomodoro task) and you then add up >> the total number of Pomodoros you have for the task that you have >> planned for the day and compare this to the number that you know you >> are able to complete in a day. >> >> So if was possible to calibrate the Task Effort slider using numbers >> (eg 1, 2, 3, etc) and if you could then show the total of the Task >> Effort for all the tasks in a group (eg a day), then this would really >> help with planning. >> >> And I feel sure that many of the other features of the technique could >> also be supported by MLO - either as is, or with some relatively minor >> enhancements which would (hint) potentially open up a new market for >> MLO (over 6500 people downloaded the book in one month). >> >> Just for the record: I have no relationship with the people other >> than the fact that it looks as if it addresses areas which I have yet >> to see any other technique address >> >> Richard >> >> > > *Mark Levison* | Founder and Consultant - > TheAgileConsortium<http://theagileconsortium.com/>| Agile > Editor @ InfoQ <http://www.infoq.com/about.jsp> > Blog <http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/> | > Twitter<http://twitter.com/mlevison>| Office: (613) 761-9821 > Recent Entries: Agile Mailing Lists a > Survey<http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/2009/06/agile-mailing-lists.html%20>, > Do You Suspect You Have a Less than Productive Person on Your > Team?<http://www.notesfromatooluser.com/2009/01/do-you-suspect-you-have-a-less-than-productive-person-on-your-team.html> > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MyLifeOrganized" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<mylifeorganized%[email protected]> > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized?hl=en > -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group. 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