#but maybe for a future upload of the segments from his perspective. at least for steve and nari's and maybe jim's

[hisirdovx]

"Is it that you think yourself undeserving?"

"It's not that. It's just—"

"Douxie."

Hands curled into fists over his knees. His chest felt knotted, like the veins and nerves beneath his skin were twisting over themselves in a mad scramble to close his heart off from the world. To mask the vulnerability, not for any sense of self preservation or shame, but simply because the weight of his heart could not seem to bear a love that wasn't his own.

Douxie blinked away tears. "It's not that I don't think I deserve it," he said, slowly, testing the shape of the words on his tongue to make sure they felt right. "I'm just not very used to it, I'm afraid."

[interblag-blog]

On September 25, I wrote a blog post describing my plans to end my struggle with procrastination using the Pomodoro Technique. Seventeen days later, the results are in; did Francesco Cirillo's world-famous technique help me reclaim my lost time?

I'll save you the reading: my experiment was an utter, blatant, abject, resigned, other synonyms failure. Well, it was a failure... at its intended purpose. Along the way, I learned a lot about myself and how I work, and how I might be able to re-introduce the Pomodoro Technique to greater success in the future.

Starting with the pomodoro round I used to write my previous blog post, I kept track of how many such rounds I completed in a notebook. Bearing in mind that my goal was to complete seven rounds in as many days, each one accomplishing at least one of the tasks or goals in my planner, here's a digital copy of my notebook:

I

(By the way, that's a tally mark. Or, maybe it could be Roman numerals. Or regular numerals. Who knows?)

How Successful was I?

Looking from a sheerly statistical perspective, I completed one seventh, or 14.285714% of the pomodoro rounds I intended to. If each individual pomodoro is twenty-five minutes long, that means I was productive for a grand total of one hundred minutes, or just shy of two hours. In the words of the great Mark Forward in his role as the Coach on Letterkenny, my performance was "Embarrassing, ya pheasant!"

Let's break down why that happened.

In my previous blog post, I acknowledged that my schedule is chaotic, and that I wasn't always going to be afforded the long stretch of time required for pomodori. I also promised myself that if any such disturbance were to occur, that I would get back into the saddle the next day. However, I didn't expect that the following week would be one of the busiest weeks of my life. Between two tests, a presentation, and an assignment, I also had to complete an application for the prestigious Loran Scholarship. This meant wild goose chases all over the school, hunting for teachers to sign off on four years' worth of in-school activity, and frantically writing my response essay. The essay would have been manageable to write at home... if I had gone home any day of the week before 9:00 P.M. Some days, I was attending meetings and rehearsals; some days, I was running them.

Somehow, amid all this chaos, I managed to cram in some studying and assignment work in my usual, haphazard, coffee-fuelled fashion. Somehow, whether from the intervention of some kind deity or a stroke of luck, my lowest grade on all of the aforementioned schoolwork was a pitiable 99%.

How many of these disturbances could have been prevented by better prior planning, more rigorous in-school work habits, or surmounting my utter inability to say "no"? I don't know. Nevertheless, the numbers don't lie: I'm more on top of my grades and extra-curricular responsibilities than I've ever been. To my parents' and my collective chagrin, although it's clear whether my work is getting done, I still lack the feeling of control over when and how it gets done. Unfortunately, the Pomodoro Technique cannot do much in that respect.

After that horrendous first week, I took quite a bit of time to introspect and think about why this experiment failed so spectacularly. I came to realize that the Pomodoro Technique didn't solve my productivity problems because it doesn't address the root of the problem. The Technique attempts to eliminate distractions while working to produce long stretches of intense focus. I do admit that sometimes I can be distractible, especially when I'm disinterested in the work. However, if the work is sufficiently interesting – or urgent – then focus is seldom the rate-limiting step. My true undoing is getting started.

In an attempt to diagnose why I had such difficulty beginning work, I downloaded an app called Moment. Moment allows me to track how many times I pick up my phone, how long I use it for, as well as what apps I use most frequently. After using it for only a few days, I was utterly blown away by the result. On average, I use my phone upwards of FOUR hours a day, picking it up seventy-two different times daily. Sure, some pickups are as innocuous as checking the time or changing the song, but the four hours I tick away (or, as the app delightfully puts it, 27% of my waking life) always begin with picking up my phone.

Finally, after a week, the app instructs me how to take screenshots of my battery use, so that it can calculate which apps I use the most frequently. Far and away, the worst offenders were Instagram and Facebook; I used each of them upwards of ninety minutes a day. In a bold move, I deleted both of them off of my phone indefinitely. If I am going to be childish by abusing my phone to blow off my work, it's only a parent-like response that can save me: taking my toy away.

(On left: me. On right: my conscience.)

Who knew that my meme addiction would become the root of my problems?

This self-inflicted punishment will continue until morale improves – err, I mean, until I can develop a work habit sturdy enough to withstand the unexpected. If my meme habits can withstand a day or two without my phone, then my work habits can too.

What Will I Do Moving Forward?

For now, I'm going to continue using Moment, as well as a browser extension with a similar model, in an attempt to limit my destructive behaviours. Right now, I have an extensive blacklist of applications and websites on which I can only spend a total of seventy-five minutes per day. Any more than that, and my browser locks out of all of them for the day. I think that seventy-five minutes is reasonable: while I should be able to relax a little after school or after finishing my homework, any more and I might as well not have a limit. Nonetheless, I'll continue tweaking them as I see fit until I can be productive regularly.

Then, and only then, I'll try to re-implement the Pomodoro Technique. The Technique seems very interesting, and I think it would be a good way to segment long stretches of work such that I don't burn out. However, these long stretches of work simply do not exist yet, hence I have no burnout to prevent. I'm cautiously optimistic about the future, as long as I apply the effort within myself to find out what works for me.

Reading back on how hopeful I was at the beginning of this endeavour, I almost have to laugh. Perhaps, if the me from seventeen days ago knew that his experiment would fail, he would have done things differently. This blog post would have borne good news instead of bad.

What's that? How can I prove that the experiment failed? Well...

This blog post is due Thursday, October 12, at 1:45 P.M.

It's currently Thursday, October 12, at 12:00 P.M.

Seems as good a time as any to start...