Whether this is your first year at university or your last, exam season can feel overwhelming. We are here to give you some tips to help prepare you to approach each exam with a healthy outlook. This post will focus on The Pomodoro Technique, but we have more advice for exam season coming your way, so keep an eye out for other posts from this series!

Do you struggle with effective time management? 

If this is you, try thinking of study time as short chunks, or tomatoes, rather than hours! This may initially seem silly, but millions of people swear by the Pomodoro technique. 

Where did the Pomodoro Technique come from? 

Pomodoro is Italian for tomato and was developed in the late 1980s in Italy by university student Francesco Cirillo. Struggling to focus on studying and feeling overwhelmed, Cirillo set himself the task of committing to just 10 minutes of focused study time. Using a tomato shaped kitchen timer in his house, he ended up finding success and went on to write a 130-page book on the method. 

What is the Pomodoro Technique? 

Breaking it down really simply: 

1. Make yourself a quick to do list of what you want to achieve 
2. Get a timer (can be on your phone) 
3. Set your time for 25 minutes, focusing on a single task until your timer rings 
4. When your session ends, record what you have completed (can just be in a sentence!) 
5. Enjoy a five-minute break 
6. After you have completed four pomodoros, take a longer break (between 15-30 minutes) 

Rules of the Pomodoro practice 

• Breaking down complex issues: If a task requires more than 4 pomodoros, it should be divided into smaller actionable steps 

• Small tasks go together: Any task that takes less than one pomodoro can be combined with other simple tasks, for example, ‘email professor’ and ‘pay rent’. 

• Once your timer has been set, it must ring: This time must not be used to check emails, teams chats or text messages – any of these can be noted down and returned to later. If you have an unavoidable disruption, take a five-minute break and start again. You should track your interruptions as they occur and reflect on how to avoid them in your next session. This rule applies even if you finish your task before the timer goes off. Use the rest of your time for other work, improving skills or knowledge 

Benefits of the Pomodoro Technique 

Procrastination 

Years of research has shown that procrastination has little to do with laziness or lack of self control. It is more to put things off to avoid negative feelings. The idea of starting to study for an exam feels huge, and you may not be even sure how to start. Instead, we turn to short term gratification, such as Instagram or Netflix, which boosts our mood (temporarily). 

The Pomodoro technique helps us to break out of the avoidance cycle and shrink whatever you’re avoiding to a tiny and unintimidating first step. This could be reading the introduction of an article, or answering a practice test. 

This is how the Pomodoro Technique works; by breaking down your huge and overwhelming tasks into small goals. It encourages a hyper focus on this one thing rather than you being overwhelmed by the whole thing. One step (or pomodoro!) at a time. 

Distractions 

It’s so frustrating when you are in a flow and you have been interrupted by a barrage of notifications on your phone, which take our attention away. The good news, though, is that many of these interruptions are something that we can control, by putting our phone away and removing these distractions. The Pomodoro technique only requires attention in such short bursts, that mean you can usually afford to wait the 25 minutes and focus on the task at hand. 

Interested? Give the Pomodoro Technique a go!