The Independent interviewed Molly Martindale, TRIO Student Support Services (SSS) Peer Coach, about the Pomodoro Technique, which is demonstrated and taught to students who seek help in the TRIO office. The Pomodoro Technique is a technique of setting a digital or analog timer in front of the student doing homework or preparation for class as a way to create a sense of urgency to finish the work. This technique may work better or worse for particular types of courses, and it may or may not work for every student. However, it may be worth giving it a try as an attempt to make doing homework more efficient.
With a goal of 20 or 25 minutes, “set that timer and begin reading, and then, you know, take your break,” Martindale said. “Close the book, don’t look at it, and do something else for your 5-minute breaks.” Martindale tells her students to keep repeating that pattern until the assigned reading is finished. However, it can be tricky for reading “because maybe the timer goes off and you’re in the middle of a paragraph or not at a natural stopping point,” she said.
The Pomodoro Technique can be more or less flexible depending on the task to be accomplished such as textbook readings, math problems or writing an essay. “So, if you’re in a math course and you know that your calculus problem is going to take you like 10 minutes for one problem,” Martindale said, “set the timer maybe for 20 minutes and then try to get two problems done in the 20 minutes or something like that.”
In a paper titled “Can a Tomato Increase Your Productivity?” by Larry D. Burton (2016), the timer allows the brain to have a limited amount of focus time, lowers the probability of procrastination, lowers any chance of distraction from other tasks, and gives encouragement to complete the task at hand. Just like Martindale said, Burton explains that short tasks are deserving of a 25-minute timer, followed by a 5-minute break. However, tasks such as “course development, research projects or article writing” deserve 50 minutes on the timer followed by a 10-minute break, Burton said in his paper.
Martindale recommends this study technique to all students, not just students with ADHD or students with learning disabilities. “If they have trouble with getting started on homework or finishing their homework, it just provides a nice outline for what you can expect for your homework session,” Martindale said. “It can be really helpful to just trick your brain into saying, ‘Okay, I’m just going to work on it for 25 minutes or 20 minutes or whatever,’ and then you kind of get into the groove of it.”
Martindale told the Independent the reason for recommending the technique to students is “I think Pomodoro is easy to remember and easy to teach which is why we recommend it,” she said. “There’s research that this is a helpful strategy for our brain and our learning.”
As reported by A. J. Amit in a paper titled “Framework for Preventing Procrastination And Increasing Productivity (2021),” the Pomodoro Technique allows productivity to increase like other methods such as “peer-influence, gamification and incentivization.” Time estimation is a challenge that many people have trouble accomplishing, but when the manual task of estimating time is traded off to an automatic timer for new tasks, the effort of the brain for estimating time is instead used for the task itself.
“We as a human species love routine. We love what we’re comfortable with. So, I think the common challenges are just like trying something new,” Martindale said. “If you try the Pomodoro Technique and like it, that’s great. If you try it and you hate it, like there are other techniques to try for time management.”
According to a paper titled “The Effects of Pomodoro Technique on Academic-Related Tasks, Procrastination Behavior and Academic Motivation Among College Students in a Mixed Online Learning Environment” by R.J. Dizon et al. (2021), Flowtime Technique is another tactic that students can use that is more flexible than the Pomodoro Technique. It allows single-task focusing until tiredness sets in, then a break is taken, and continuing the single task with more breaks taken later.
The Pomodoro Technique is “not one-size-fits-all for every student. So, don’t beat yourself up if it’s not working for you.” Martindale said there are varieties of different Pomodoro timers like digital and analog, color changing, hourglass, some that click and some quiet ones. The student should find the Pomodoro timer that works for them.
While the Pomodoro Technique may or may not work for all students, it serves potential for students to avoid procrastination and get their coursework done. While there are other techniques that could be more, less or equally effective, it may be sufficient for students to give the Pomodoro Technique a fair try while writing essays, practicing math problems or reading a textbook.
If students have additional questions about study techniques, they should contact TRIO by visiting the department on the fourth floor of the Ronald Williams Library on NEIU’s main campus, emailing [email protected] or calling (773) 442-4981.
