Hello world! This is our first ever deployed web app. The app utilises the pomodoro technique for better time management.
For those familiar with italian cuisine, ‘pomodoro’ is just the italian word for tomato.
But we’re not talking about spaghetti with tomato sauce here – although cooking and eating spaghetti is one of the best time investments one can make.
We’re talking about time management or – ominous music in the background – focus and productivity.
The ‘Pomodoro Technique’ is a popular and quite effective time management technique.
It was formulated by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, when he was a university student. He used a small kitchen timer in the shape of a tomato, hence the name ‘pomodoro’.
In its core, all this technique does is to break working on a task into small intervals, called ‘pomodoros’. The standard focus duration is 25 minutes, and that’s what we use in our time management web app.
After each working interval follows a 5-minute break. If you complete four pomodoros, you take a longer break of 15 minutes.
That’s it!
Easiest than cooking spaghetti although, one must readily admit, not as tasty.
Let’s get more practical…
The effectiveness of the Pomodoro Technique lies in its simplicity.
Psychologically, it is far easier to focus uninterruptedly for a small period of time, than to work for a large period of time with constant focus.
As Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX famously said:
If you give yourself 30 days to clean your home, it will take you 30 days. But if you give yourself 3 hours to get it done, it will take 3 hours. The same applies to your goals, ambitions and dreams.
And the same applies to any task. That’s the principle behind the pomodoro technique.
Set a specific time-frame for your brain to work with from the beginning. It’s impossible to be focused all the time, and if you try it, you will be focused none of the time.
But if you know from the start that there is time for focus and there is time for relax, you will be able to make the best of both states.
Our pomodoro web app is on purpose minimalistic. After all, the essence of the pomodoro technique is simplicity and focus. The less distractions you have, the better.
The functionality is simple and straightforward.
Just write your task, or don’t for that matter, and hit the button. The app will do the time management for you.
Focus on the task in hand, not on time. That’s why the clock is always out of focus – see what we’ve done there? 😉
You can use our pomodoro web app by just visiting the page pomodoro.silentforce.co from your browser.
If you want to pause the timer, in case of an emergency, such as, say, an earthquake or a fire, just hit the button again.
You can also check the overall time by hovering over the clock. This will show you the total time elapsed since you first hit the button. So, no matter how many times you hit the pause and let time be wasted, you cannot – and you shouldn’t! – cheat yourself.
By the way, there are ways to cheat the app. They have been left open to exploitation on purpose. Mind you: the penalty for cheating the app is the waste of your precious time…
This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time.
Check our other games and apps, or send us your ideas for more web apps.
PS.: The cover tomatoes photo is by Andrea Riezzo and the other tomatoes photo is by Alex Ghizila, both on Unsplash.
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