After our recent LW Dojo in Berlin we had a conversation on our mailing list about pomodoros.
How do we handle it if the bell rings but we are in flow? Is it good to honor the bell and take a pause or is it more effective to continue working to keep in flow?
The original setting of 25 minutes came from the 25 minutes that Francesco Cirillo tomato shaped timer had naturally. The LW Study Hall seems to use 32 minutes work with 8 minutes pause. If you have experimented with different lengths, what worked for you?
Did you come to any surprising conclusions about pomodoros while working with them, that might be interesting to other people?
I used to view pomodoro timers as good for production type work but not for creative, in the zone work. This model served me well. There have been a few surprises. I had assumed that studying was creative work and therefore would not benefit from a timer. Barbara Oakley's Coursera course "Learning how to Learn" recommends the use of a pomodoro for studying. Both the coursera course and her book "A Mind For Numbers" goes into why this is the case.