How to properly use the Pomodoro Technique

For those who don’t know, the Pomodoro technique is a popular studying technique that, in my words, condenses into this ethic. You spend 25 minutes on intensive whatever you do, whether homework, studying for your next midterm, or working on your writing job. After the 20 minutes, you spend around 10 minutes taking a short break, stretching, going to the bathroom, or drinking water. You repeat this process three times, and you can take a 20-minute break to do anything unrelated to work. When I first looked into the technique, it was the preferred studying technique for med school students, MIT students desiring a 4.0 GPA, and generally successful high school students.

When I looked into the Pomodoro technique, I wanted to study better, for lack of a better description of what I meant by the word “better.” I tried to prepare for an A for an upcoming AP Calc AB exam related to doing higher-order derivatives.

I was at home, on the school-provided laptop, looking for solutions and thought the Pomodoro technique was viable.

So, I tried the Pomodoro technique for the first time immediately after reading it in one article on the computer. I don’t remember which article it was. But I’ll link it below the entire article if I can find it. I used my iPhone as a timer for the 25-10 thing and started the process immediately. At first, I thought that progress was good. I finished my math homework at the same pace as before, which was relatively fast. I believe most people then spent about 40 minutes finishing AP Calc homework. I finished the assignment in 20 (including distractions, and I’ll go through them later). I found that to be quite rewarding. But that was the only time I got to use the technique correctly.

When it was time for the break, I watched YouTube videos for about 30 minutes. I watched the entire video, which I don’t remember due to watching many of them without even thinking much of it. I felt that my first video watched for the day was about 15 minutes, and then I watched another for 10 minutes. Anyways, I didn’t know where my time went. So, when I finished my untimely YouTube break, I returned to the lazy way of working.

I didn’t know where my time went

Before doing the Pomodoro technique, I worked on the assignment and spent hours until I finished the assignment. At the same time, I pull up my phone or iPad to watch YouTube videos all day. Although many people like to multitask, it is not practical for academics. In academics and productivity, you must focus on your projects, which was the case for me. I watch YouTube videos and attempt to finish one math problem from a Calculus assignment. After completing the assignment, I ditched studying. I watched YouTube videos or went to the bathroom for about 10-40 minutes at a time. Watching YouTube videos is so entertaining that I cannot keep track of time. I repeated the process until I finished all the work needed for the day, which rarely happened. Instead, I had to go to bed at around 22:00 (10 pm in 12-hour time) and didn’t sleep. I slept until 23:00 (11 pm).

That was my experience of doing the Pomodoro technique for the first time. It wasn’t successful.

Throughout my 4th year in high school, I’ve done exactly like this, trying to implement study methods and return to the old lazy way. Although I was successful in high school, I knew it wouldn’t work.

Here I am at university, and there are a lot of resources. Being so far away from home also made me think about how to spend time learning better.

I’m unsure why that is, but I believe I can finally try the Pomodoro technique at a university and utilise it to its fullest.

There are a lot of resources. For someone trying to do their best for what it is striving for, it better work for it.

The first time I successfully implemented it was the Sunday before my summer classes started. At the time, there was this event where students could go on the bus for a trip to Santa Monica Beach. Santa Monica Beach has some cool stuff the host planned out, and it seemed like a fun time. I didn’t go because I got some classes on a Canvas-style platform called BruinLearn. It’s Canvas for UCLA students. In my case, there were two classes: University Studies and Chemistry. I knew that university was challenging and that I should better utilise my time to achieve the same success in high school. So, I went to the infamous UCLA library, Powell Library. No, I went to the Young Research Library. But it doesn’t matter as both of those were closed. All my libraries at the university were closed because it was Sunday.

But on Sunday, I went to one of those outside study areas near Kerkhoff Hall and tried some learning techniques. The environment is pleasant for studying. So, I went on and packed everything for this moment. I pulled up my laptop, set a timer, and immediately started with something. The first thing I did was open the chemistry lecture and take notes on them. The timer I set was 50 minutes because a video of reading the seminar on that day said so. What I meant was that the host from a video preferred studying for 50 minutes and having 10-minute breaks, compared to having 20-minute 10-minute intervals. So, I tried the 50-minute 10-minute break.

I’m not a good note-taker and don’t believe I’m taking notes properly. When I looked into the Chemistry lecture, nearly all the information was knowledge I’d already learned back in high school. So, I wrote about 70% of the notes with almost every sentence I’ve paraphrased myself. Those notes contained 70% of the lecture, which is not helpful.

You see, taking notes is not for the teacher to be necessarily impressed by. Taking notes is designed for you to study and use as a reference because the lectures and the textbooks contain way too much information for you to cover. The letters are the most personal thing to you because you understandably wrote them. The lectures and the textbooks don’t show you examples; the models don’t make sense in a subject like chemistry. I’ll elaborate more on taking notes later.

I didn’t know that back then because I rarely used notes. If I’m stuck on something, I go on the Internet to look up a concept and read it off of that. Or, better, I can take lessons from Khan Academy, which was what I did after finishing reading the lecture. Also, my notes aren’t very detailed. Although the letters have an enormous amount of outlines, no different colours appear, and the text is just something I cannot understand. I would probably have to drop the class before attending the course.

Anyways, the lecture for Monday is about 70 slides, and the 50-minute timer is up. I drank water and went to the bathroom. Although many places on campus are closed, the Ackerman Union Center is still open, albeit fewer restaurants are opening. After going to the bathroom, I returned home, where I studied and continued on the 50-minute and 10-minute thing. By this point, I have the feeling of increased productivity simply due to the increasing amount of information the more I’m onto a task.

After going through one Khan Academy lesson, I thought I had finished my homework and could start looking through the seminar from University Studies. Like Chemistry, I took notes similarly but found University Studies more interesting this time. I don’t know about you, but I’m interested in succeeding in college because I want to get a 4.0 GPA for a postgraduate scholarship.

Like the Chemistry lecture slides, the University Studies seminar slides are equally as long. I didn’t finish them after the 50 minutes rang up. So, I carried everything to the bathroom and returned to the same place. Like always, I continued on the seminar slides and taking notes. When I finish taking notes from the seminar slides, I can work on fun things. Those fun things were writing on this blog and writing a script for this podcast. Because I now have the focus needed, I can breeze in on those things and call them a day.

I should get lunch before returning to some hardcore study.

So, I returned to my study grounds and tried going through more Khan Academy lessons, about three lessons. After this point, I’m done for the day and can return to my dorm.

The significant benefit of utilising the Pomodoro technique is that you timed yourself. Being timed forces you to focus, and you must be on your toes when studying. The thing I found the most useful when looking at is to mimic something on a test. That aspect of the Pomodoro technique is the most useful for me.

And that was my studying session back in Sunday.

The worst part of the Pomodoro technique is how you utilise your time. I’m pretty bad at time management, and using the Pomodoro technique doesn’t help. And that aspect brings me back to decision-making when deciding what to do and what not to do. One part I must do is to sort tasks as necessary and something to be finished quickly as homework to do first and discard everything else. For the moment, my tasks look like this.

Urgent and Important	Not Urgent but Important
Attend class Finish all homework assignments Study for the next exam/Plan for the presentation Help parents do housework YouTube videos, especially with strict deadlines	Write blogs Write film and TV scripts Write script for podcasts Exercise Practice guitar and piano Making friends and networking Applying to scholarships Make music
Urgent but not Important	Neither Urgent nor Important
Clean room Laundry Meal planning Bath	Social media Excessive YouTube Unnecessary phone calls

Wait a minute, I have an excellent Eisenhower matrix schedule. Most of my actions should belong on the “Neither Urgent nor Important” side, but it doesn’t. Most of them fall where I expected them to be: the Not Urgent but Important.

You need a plan

The Eisenhower Matrix is one of several ways to plan your time better, and the main takeaway of adequately utilizing the Pomodoro technique is this: you need a plan. I need help to provide you with a plan to figure out how to spend your day. I don’t know you, and I cannot understand you due to government policies prohibiting some people from infiltrating others. So, I cannot help you in crafting a plan. But the thing that you should do is to take your time, little by little. Slowly, you can find a plan that works best for you.

Properly utilizing the Pomodoro technique is not the successful implementation of the method, and it won’t magically make you the smartest in the room. Instead, the Pomodoro technique is a tool you can use depending on your plan. Suppose you have a good timing plan and reachable goals. In that case, you can potentially utilize the Pomodoro technique to be the smartest in the room. But suppose you don’t have a good timing plan and unrealistic goals. In that case, you will have difficulty utilizing the Pomodoro technique and see minimal improvements to your study plan.

It’s better to fall under the latter than not utilizing the Pomodoro technique like I was during my last year of high school.

For what I am going to do, I will refine my goals and continue to reach out to others to review my blogs and other forms of academic help. Like always, the Pomodoro technique is just a tool.

Thanks for reading.