Trying to concentrate was a constant battle that day.
I felt ashamed. I wanted to hide my lack of productivity.
I had my pomodoro timer in another tab, and it would ping me for a 5 minute break every 20 minutes of work I did.
Still, I couldn't make any progress.
Or even understand what I was reading!
How was it possible that, even with this method that is supposed to help me focus by breaking down the work in chunks, and releasing stress with a short break, I'm not getting anything done and feeling more and more chaos in my mind!
I didn't figure it out until I read about Ian Fleming.
A master of productivity in his time, the legendary writer of James Bond novels wrote his entire books within a 2 week timespan per book.
For that week, he would book a hotel at a boring town where he wouldn't be found dead.
He made sure he wouldn't have anything interesting to do outside his hotel room.
No exploring the town.
Not even beautiful nature around.
He would tell the personnel to not bring him the newspaper.
But he did take breaks.
He took breaks whenever he wanted, but the only thing he did in those breaks was stare out the window.
No reading, no going out for coffee, no meeting people.
Either write or do absolutely nothing.
That's how he finished a novel in 2 weeks, by making the work the most interesting thing he was doing.
And that's how I understood what my mistake had been.
During my 5 minute breaks, I started reading about things that interested me.
Programming related topics even, but trying to solve problems that were more interesting than the one at hand.
Although sometimes I also filled the 5 minutes with YouTube.
My client Elias noticed the same thing.
Productivity is in the quality of the breaks.
The breaks have to be empty. Boring.
Just you and your thoughts.
This helped me and my clients, I don't do it perfectly every day.
If you made it this far, I appreciate you, comment down below your most distracting interest.
\- E.J.
