Beat Procrastination and improve your focus
Today, am gonna share one wired fact about me that is every year I get old but if I talk about my attention span, it shrinks more and more. For instance, If I have a task to complete in 1 hour, first 30 or 40 minutes will be spending in checking email, WhatsApp, Scrolling my FB and internet browsing, and after wasting my time, the panic monster comes in and I have to say goodbye to my gratification monkey and start working on that task with full attention and interest and luckily, I complete that tasks in the last moments.
As we have entered into the new calendric year of 2021, may this year be filled with the blessing of God (Ameen), I have written my new year resolution. One personal goal that I have mentioned in my New Year Resolution is to Overcome the procrastination. I was looking for techniques and method that prove beneficially for me to beat procrastination, I came to know about the Pomodoro Technique in a few days ago. So, I started Amal on it without letting myself to waste further time.
Firstly, lemme brief you about this technique and here we go;
- Set the Pomodoro timer (alarm) to 25 minutes
- Work on the task until the timer rings. If a distraction pops into your head, write it down, but immediately get back on the task
- After the timer tings, put a star (or a tick) on a piece of paper
- Take a short 3–5 minute break (perhaps treat yourself with a candy
- Repeat steps 1–4
- After you have 4 ticks on your paper, you can take a longer break (15–20 minutes), and continue working on your task by going to step 1 until you complete your task
Give it a try if you want to improve your focus on your task and to overcome procrastination. Now, am going to share my experience of how I enjoyed my studies while acting on the Pomodoro Technique. Firstly, I made my to-do list and after prioritising the task, I assigned the time to my tasks.
The first task I decided to do is article reading within 25 minutes. Therefore, I must avoid all the distraction to be able to finish an article reading within the assigned time, I set up an alarm in my cell phone. As there is a saying “Time flies” same happened to me. I didn’t realize how that 25 minutes passed away as I started studying. I completed my 1st reading task by using the technique of scanning and skimming. Now, I was to go to break and walked out of my room.
It was a bit difficult however, I was able to manage to come back after the 5-minutes break. Next task was to develop an interview guide for my research work, I started working on it. Ma’am has shared guidelines therefore, it was very easy to develop that interview guide. After some time, I found my cell is ringing, Oh! It’s Bhaiya’s call, on the top of I had to take that. Most of the time, this call takes more than 1 hour but that day Bhaiya had some stuff to do so, he ended call right after 5 minutes. I considered this call time as my break time and finished my this task in 35 minutes including my break time.
The third task was quite easy to perform as it involved just slide reading. I thought that I would easily complete this task even before the assigned time. But this time I got distracted many times. While studying, one idea about my mega project was popped out in my mind, so I started thinking about that 😂. After wasting some amount of time, I turned my attention to my study.
Finally, I was in the last round to win this challenge and Task 4 was looking at me. After getting an overview from slides, it became easy for me to read a chapter in detail. I divided this chapter into 3 parts and I served 25 minutes to complete part 1 without any distraction. By doing this, I had completed all my task that was mentioned in my to-do list. Along with this, my break time began and I walked out of my study room.
