Stephen King recommends that you read and write 4-6 hours a day. If you cannot find the time, you should always be able to find at least 1 hour (even if you have to hijack your lunch hour).
If for some reason you can’t find even one damn hour — at which point I question whether you are in fact a writer — then you can always find 25 minutes. (And if you can’t find 25 minutes, please go get a job as a copywriter so you can write all day, and also realize how shitty it is to work all day and not be able to produce your own work. Then we’ll talk.)
Enter the Pomodoro technique, which is so simple as to be almost magical.
The main thing to know about the Pomodoro technique is that you set a timer, for 25 minutes, and work your task until the timer is up. Then, you take a 5 (or 10, or 15) minute break, and work your next Pomodoro.
You can use all kinds of tools for this, but if you use Trello to track your tasks (as I do), then you might want to consider the Pomello app for Google Chrome.
There are a few awesome things about Pomodoros.
- 25 minutes goes quick, and everyone should be able to carve out at least that amount of time.
- You will be amazed at what you can do in 25 minutes.
- At the end of the Pomodoro, you are supposed to take a break — but I often find myself so in the flow that I’m not ready to quit. Embrace it, and keep doing it for an hour.
- You can get a tomato timer to go with your Pomodoro. A simple web timer, or the one on your phone, will also do nicely.
Now go write.
Also published on Medium.