Now that you know for how many hours per day it’s usually possible to learn programming, let’s talk about how to use these hours in order to make your learning process as fruitful and quick as possible.
The solution is to use the popular time management method called the Pomodoro Technique. It’s very simple: you work for 25 minutes, and then you have a 5-minute break. As a result, all your learning or working time is divided into such 30-minute blocks.
Every 25-minute interval is called “pomodoro”, after the kitchen timer in a shape of a tomato (“pomodoro” in Italian) that was used in 1980s by the author of this technique Francesco Cirillo.
Of course, today you needn’t have the same device to use this method. Just install some free Pomodoro app on your smartphone or tablet PC, or even use one of many such web applications in your web browser.
You will only need a timer and a counter of pomodoro intervals you do during one day. So, don’t spend too much time on choosing the best application of this kind, even though you’ll inevitably find tons of them.
During a 25-minute pomodoro interval focus exclusively on learning programming. Don’t check your email and social networks accounts.
Also, don’t multitask. You have to be 100% focused on your current tutorial section, book chapter, coding exercise, etc.
As you’re having 5 minutes of rest after a 25-minute pomodoro, try to relax. The best way to do this is mindfulness meditation. Sit down, close your eyes, and focus on your breathing until you hear the signal of the next pomodoro. Your brain and eyes will say “thank you” for this thoughtfulness.
If you also want to feel the same gratitude from your body, alternate calm meditation breaks with more active ones. It’s not a good idea to always sit on a chair or a sofa, both when you learn and when you have a rest, anyway.
So every second break get up, have a five-minute stroll, do some simple physical exercises. Try not to think about what you were thinking during the last pomodoro.
Sometimes, when I’m very sleepy, I even use these 5 minutes for a quick refreshing nap.
Whatever type of rest you prefer, during pauses between pomodoros don’t go to Facebook, or YouTube, or the website where you check news. The idea of these five minutes is to give your brain a break, not to switch from one source of information (a tutorial, a book, etc.) to another.
The Pomodoro Technique may double your productivity
When used properly, the Pomodoro Technique may double or even triple your productivity, and this is not a joke or a motivational nonsense. Before I started using this system, I could barely learn programming for 2 or 3 hours a day, and the last hour was usually pretty weak in terms of quality of learning, since I was already tired.
With this system I could learn for 4 to 6 hours a day (these numbers include all five-minute breaks), and the quality of each of these hours was very high. So, with Pomodoro Technique my productivity increased practically thrice.
Sounds too good to be true, I know. I was astonished myself and have been a huge fan of this system ever since.
Usually, when you learn programming, you might aim at 10 pomodoros per day (five hours). It’s more than reasonable to be pretty content if you managed to do 8 of them, happy if it’s 10, and proud of yourself if you hit the 12 pomodoros mark.
These 10 pomodoros needn’t be consecutive. In fact, according to the concept of the Pomodoro Technique, you’ve got to take a long break (15 to 30 minutes) after each four pomodoros, but you can apply this rule a little bit more loosely.
For example, you can divide your daily portion of pomodoros into several sessions, like 6 plus 4, or 4 plus 4 plus 2. When you take a long break, it might last, say, for an hour.
Find your ideal number of pomodoros
Naturally, once I discovered the “magic” of pomodoros (I will explain how it works below), I got very excited, and started thinking that maybe with this system I could spend on learning programming even more time, like 10 highly productive hours a day (20 pomodoros).
So, I decided to test my limits. The first day of my experiment I managed to do 16 or 18 pomodoros. But, if I were completely honest with myself at that moment, I would admit that the last two or four were not that efficient, and they were more about the number of pomodoros rather than about the quality of learning.
The next day I did 12 pomodoros, and they also weren’t very productive, since I was still extremely tired after the previous day.
The third and the fourth days were completely skipped, as I was so fed up with programming that I couldn’t even think about it without disgust. Eventually I returned to my “8 to 12” system.
Of course, your numbers might look different — feel free to adjust them. Maybe, your ideal range is 6 to 10 or 10 to 14 pomodoros a day.
And, as I said before, it’s also normal to call it a day after just 4 pomodoros if it was two hours of studying some really difficult topic. Ultimately, your sense of progress is much more precise indicator of your effectiveness than the number on the counter.
Why it works and why 25 minutes are enough
Some people dislike the concept of the Pomodoro Technique since 25-minute intervals seem too short. They say: “I need to stay focused for a much longer period of time in order to get something done”.
I’ve got to admit: I used to be one of those skeptics too. But eventually I decided to give this method a try, and it exceeded all my expectations.
It turned out that an assumption that such a “dashed” structure of learning time isn’t applicable to any serious task is completely wrong. On the contrary, it keeps you much more focused for much longer period of time than you could achieve without the Pomodoro Technique.
One of the “secrets” of high productivity is “have a rest before you’re tired”. This is exactly what the Pomodoro Technique helps you do. You work hard for 25 minutes, and then charge your “batteries” for 5 minutes. As a result, even though you do work hard, you don’t really feel tired until it’s your eighth or tenth pomodoro for today.
Think only about the next pomodoro
Another significant advantage of this method is that while using it you don’t need to focus on the big picture when you’re doing some particular job. This is very helpful from the psychological perspective.
Your task is pretty simple: you have to learn just for the next 25 minutes. That’s it. No big goals, no overwhelming plans. Just do your best for less than half an hour.
Often you cannot predict correctly how much time some programming task will take. You may expect to complete it in two hours, but in reality you might be working on it for five hours and still be far from the finish line.
If you’re focusing on the fact that you failed to finish the job as quickly as you imagined, you’ll probably be annoyed and angry. But if your goal were to do your best for those five hours, one pomodoro after another, you’d be quite satisfied, since you’d achieve what you wanted — 10 pomodoros a day are a wonderful result.
Even though the task still wouldn’t be completed, the difference in perception of the situation would be huge. Your great achievement — a highly productive day — would be noticed instead of being lost amidst waves of negative emotions. This is especially important in the world of programming, where the result of your work is not always instantly tangible.
The Pomodoro Technique helps tackling intimidating tasks
The Pomodoro Technique helps tackling huge intimidating tasks, since with this system you don’t have to complete them right away, but just make a small step at a time instead. Try doing it for 25 minutes, then another 25 minutes, and another ones.
At some point you suddenly realize that about 50% of the job is done, including the most difficult parts, and you’re so inspired that the other half of the task is completed as easily as a walk in the park.
The Pomodoro Technique turns a bad day into a good one
Sometimes you may have a day when you’re very reluctant to start learning or doing something else equally important. Pomodoros help in such situations too.
You just tell yourself: “Ok, I will do one or two pomodoros. It’s only twenty-five or, maybe, fifty minutes, I can do it. If they turn out to be a complete waste of time, I’ll just stop it for today.”
Usually a couple of pomodoros with no pressure of a big goal are enough to smoothly prepare you for a full working day, and you continue working even after the pomodoros counter exceeds the number “2”. Thus the Pomodoro Technique can turn a bad day into a regular good one.
Why 5-minute breaks are useful in programming
Another one advantage of relatively short intervals is that this method helps you avoiding many consecutive hours of fruitless thinking about possible solutions for some difficult problem you stuck with.
Often a five-minute break is enough to reboot your mind and to notice the solution you crave right after the next pomodoro starts.
Don’t skip these breaks, even when it seems to be a good idea. You might feel that you just don’t need it right now, but this is natural for the Pomodoro Technique — nobody expects that you should be significantly tired after each pomodoro, especially after the first ones.
Of course, from time to time you might be so excited about what you’re doing at the moment that any break might seem impossible — even if you technically do it, you’ll still be thinking about your task, so actually it won’t be a real break. But this is rather an exception than a common situation. Usually if you try to take a break, it’s not that hard to do and you’ll get used to it quite quickly.
Generally speaking, each skipped break reduces the aggregate number of pomodoros that you can do for a day roughly by one. It will be a price for neglecting the necessity to have a rest. So, if you work for two hours in a row with no pauses, you’ll be able to do just about half of the pomodoros that you could do if you followed the Pomodoro Technique principles more firmly.