About a year has passed since practicing the Pomodoro Technique with Toggl Track
It’s been about a year since I started practicing the Pomodoro Technique with Toggl Track, and it’s been nothing but good things, so I reflected on it.
[Premise] I thought "Pomodoro Technique is being soft"
As a personal preference, I have high interest in productivity improvement, so I’ve known about the Pomodoro Technique for several years.
However, I had the mindset that “working for 25 minutes and taking a 5-minute break is being soft,” and I had been avoiding it without trying, not just disliking it without tasting.
Then, about 10 months ago, I read 「SOFT SKILLS ソフトウェア開発者の人生マニュアル」, where the Pomodoro Technique was highly praised. When I tried it, it fit my work style better than I imagined, so I continue using it even now.
The specific method is written in the article ポモドーロテクニックを Toggl アプリで実践してる, so please refer to that.
Benefits in Scrum development
The Pomodoro Technique has so many benefits for Scrum development that if you’re doing Scrum development, you’d be missing out if you don’t use the Pomodoro Technique.
Easy calculation of achievement points
When using the Pomodoro Technique, you can see how many Pomodoros one task took just by looking at the Toggl dashboard.
Based on numbers like “How many Pomodoros did one task take?” and “How many Pomodoros did I work in one day?”, you can assign achievement points for Scrum development very easily.
Improved accuracy of work effort estimation
As you become more proficient with the Pomodoro Technique, you can estimate work effort in Pomodoro units, thinking “This feature development can be implemented in 3 Pomodoros.”
When you regularly make estimates and track results in 1 Pomodoro (= 30 minutes) units, the time unit you’re dealing with is as fine as 30 minutes, which I think naturally leads to improved estimation accuracy.
Lower task switching costs for multitasking
Ideally, you’d want to work on single tasks, but reality often doesn’t allow that. Using the Pomodoro Technique allows you to flexibly respond to sudden interrupt tasks.
First, since work time is in 1 Pomodoro = 30-minute units, even if you’re strictly practicing the Pomodoro Technique, you can switch to interrupt tasks after 30 minutes.
Also, you tend to forget what task you were doing before an interruption, but if you record task summaries in Toggl, you can quickly remember what task you were doing and return to the original work.
Weekly task reviews with Toggl
When using Toggl as the Pomodoro Technique timer, it sends weekly report emails.
As a side effect of the Pomodoro Technique, you also get the benefit of being able to review your work time based on these reports.
That’s all from the Gemba that’s improving labor productivity using the Pomodoro Technique.