Balancing my life with a Pomodoro

I am blessed (cursed, maybe?) with many interests, many areas in which I want to develop and grow.  I have a journal of pages and memories from our South Dakota trip that have yet to make it to my blog.  My initial post went up, and the rest remain. (It’s coming, I promise!)  I see peaks and valleys, cycles perhaps, of where I focus my energy and attention.  I often wonder if it’s a form of Adult ADD.  I know I am not the only one by far who feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day.  Often it’s because we can’t say no, we take on too much or overestimate the time required to spend in one area.  I’m guilty of all three, plus I’ve found several things that I just can’t live without.

I thought time management was the problem, and perhaps it is. I’m a planner, a list maker, I always have been.  And I find I sometimes (okay, A LOT of the time) spend more time planning than doing.  Checking the list. And again. And again.  Adding to it. Refining it.  Clarifying it. Adding due dates.  Until there is little time left for doing. Recently I found a nifty tool called the Pomodoro Technique, developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, which in fact I’m using right now as I type this post.  It’s a timer app that you install on your pc, and after setting the timer for 25 minutes (called a Pomodoro, which is from the Italian word  for tomato) you focus on one task, and work it until the time is up.  Then you set the timer for a five minute break. Then start another pomodoro, until you finish the task or start a new one.  After four pomodoros, you take a fifteen minute break.  And start the process all over again.  The app makes a ticking noise which I thought I’d find irritating, but actually, this wouldn’t work without it!   Complete silence would allow my brain to wander.  The ticking reminds you that you are on the clock.  It’s helped a great deal, and I use it at work, also.

So I decided to try this at home, since I split my life into several areas.  I couldn’t live without my motorcycle, and I thank God everyday for my ability to ride, and pray that is something I never lose.  The memories that have been made on our bike trips are just priceless, and they provide much of the content for my blog.  I enjoy writing about our trips, and I get to relive them all over again as I choose the right words to describe what we experience.  The same goes for my snowmobile.  It brings me almost the same joy as my bike (30 degrees and bundled could never top a sunny 80 degree day!) and it makes winter in Michigan fly by, something I had dreaded all my life until just a few years ago.

My love for photography started in October of 2009, when I told my sister I’d send a Shutterfly link of photos from a recent family camping trip.  She told me, “You know, you missed your calling as a photographer!”   I will never forget that day.  It was October 27th, 2009, and I was driving north on I-275 at the M-14 interchange, on my way to work.  It hit me just how much I enjoyed taking photos, and I decided it would be a blast to take it more seriously and really try to improve my skills and learn more.  After a Photography and Photoshop class, and continual daily practice, I’m now an exclusive microstock photographer on Dreamstime, an online stock photo agency, and I also work on fine art photography.  I still consider myself a serious amateur, but in two years, I feel I’ve made some significant progress just by committing my time to something I enjoy. 

Then there is Social Media.  It fascinates me and I’ve been fortunate enough to be given the chance to pull it together for the company I work for.  I’ve enrolled in Inbound Marketing classes and hope to be certified by the end of January.  There are many local meetups that I’ve joined and the contacts I’ve made just in the last two months have been phenomenal.   I feel like I’ve just dipped my toes in the ocean.

And of course my blog, which, if you notice the posting dates, has been the victim of my neglect as I dive into other areas.  I attended WordCamp 2011 last month, and it rekindled my love for WordPress and the endless amount of things you can do with your blog.  Another area in which there is so much  to learn, and I want so much to balance it all.

Well, ding goes my Pomodoro!   I’ve written this post non-stop in the last 25 minutes, and I thought I had nothing to share.   Now that you know pretty much a day in the life of Kathleen Howell, what does time management mean to you?  What methods are you using?    How do you fit it all in?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you manage what’s important to you.