Yana Savitsky / How a Student Changed Her Study Habits by Setting Goals and Managing Time

Welcome back incredible BookDuck fans! If you have trouble with time management, then we invite you to listen to how a student changed her study habits by setting goals and managing time. Her name is Yana and on the Ted Talk stage, she talks about her experience. So let's get started.

When Yana first told her friends that she was doing a talk on a sunny method that she used she could see the collective look of disgust that swept across their faces as they processed what I just told them. Yana firmly believes that the Pomodoro method has the power to change your life. Her typical cycle of studying used to start determined. Yana would come home, sit down at her desk and do a couple of worksheets. The only problem was that productivity only lasted for an hour as she would easily get distracted. She would usually spend a couple of hours on the phone and then she would snap back into determination but find herself getting burned out once again as the minutes ticked away. Yana would work until she physically couldn't anymore. And when she passed out, she promised herself that she would be productive. She had to succeed and yet she failed to do that every single day. She struggled to stay afloat, fatigued, stressed, and strained. And she snapped as a result, and quite truthfully. She was

disappointed with herself. Then one day she came across a video. It was a video telling her how to study better and she was intrigued by one

specific tip. The Pomodoro method.

So what exactly is good? You start by solving a problem and estimating the amount of time it will take you to complete it. Take, for example, a job that will take you four hours of work, give or take. Instead of thinking of the plan as four hours of work, you'll think of it in terms of 25-minute increments or Pomodoros, so this plan would theoretically take you eight Pomodoros.

The next step is to work those 25 minutes with absolutely no distractions or restart the Pomodoro. But after this hyper-concentrated work, you can reward yourself with a five-minute break, and then you can take a long break of fifteen to thirty minutes. As for Yana, she usually tries not to pick up the phone during these breaks and she makes coffee or takes a little walk.

This method was developed in the 90s by Francisco Cirillo, who called the system Pomodoro, which means tomato in Italian. It is important to note that after using the 25-minute kitchen timer for his work, he developed a system of 25-minute schedules. Pomodoro is a moving system designed to help you get things done.

Yana sticks to the traditional 25-minute schedule when she’s doing worksheets or preparing for tests. But for longer, more labor-intensive assignments like projects or essays, she prefers to work much longer with shorter breaks. Pomodoro has changed her, it has changed the way she thinks and acts in her work when needed. Yana could spend all day just working and just recharging her batteries. During the day, Yana was stimulated by a timer that was constantly ticking. Yana found that every 25 minutes, she quickly reached and completed these goals. It's much nicer to be able to check things off after others have cleared your work pile, knowing that you did something that day, instead of wasting two hours on Netflix.

So, are you productive, or are you just running out of time? Do you get everything done before the last minute, or do you pick up the pieces at the last minute?

To sum up, Pomodoro is a flexible system designed to help you get better quality work done in a shorter amount of time, but whatever the method, you need to treat your time differently. Set a few goals for yourself and aim to achieve them so you can put aside constant distractions and focus on your tasks. You never know how much time you have until you start using it.