Pomodoro Time Management

Dave and I hosted a Taste of ABA TECHSHOW Dinner at ABA TECHSHOW in Chicago last week, and we promised to feature a tip by each of our dinner guests here on SLAW Tips.

Our first featured tipster is Courtney Kennaday, Practice Management Advisor at the South Carolina Bar, who blogs at SC Small Firm.com.  Here’s Courtney’s tip:

“Do you jump from one task to the next without ever finishing?  You may want to try the Pomodoro Technique of getting work done.  To begin, you’ll need a kitchen timer, a list of tasks and a pencil.  Choose a task to be accomplished and set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes. (The Pomodoro is the timer.)  Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your task list.  Take a five minute break and begin a new task with the timer running.  Every 4 “Pomodoros” take a longer break (15 – 20) minutes).  The technique was created in the 1980s by Francesco Crillo.  Crillo originally used a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato (pomodoro in Italian), hence the name.  To download the free book and forms, visit the Pomodoro Technique website.”