My (mostly unsuccessful) experiments with Pomodoro productivity apps

The total revenue in the time-management and productivity apps segment is set to touch $9,987 million this year, according to market and consumer data company Statista. (Photo: Artem Maltsev via Unsplash)

This article was supposed to be published last week, but I missed my deadline. As I write this, I have two productivity apps that are aiding me to focus—simply focus!—on the task at hand, so to speak, for 25 minutes at a time. One is running on my phone; the other on my computer. Their aim is to ensure that I can stay determined for five (or more) such 25-minute sessions, with small breaks in between, and hopefully finish this article.

I was not looking for an antidote to my congenital procrastination, or distractedness, a condition that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. But when the editors of Moneycontrol asked me if I would want to explore a story on the well-established trend of precisely apportioning time, whether it be for brewing coffee, or, I don’t know, playing with your pet llamas, I thought why not? I had nothing to lose. Maybe, it would result in me discovering a better version of myself; at the very least, I would be able to send this article on time.

The business of productivity apps, spawn of our unhealthy relationship with our cellphones, is bigger than you think. Market and consumer data company Statista estimates the total revenue in the segment to touch $9,987 million this year. These include everything from email apps and Google Docs, to task managers, messaging apps for business such as Slack and note-taking apps such as Evernote. Companies across the world use some of them to slash “organisational drag”, and I also know people who swear by them.

A former private equity stalwart finds Google Calendar the best way to organise his life, while entrepreneurs such as Nandini Sankar, who runs a Mumbai-based fintech firm, once depended a lot on Evernote. “It used to come in very handy, especially when one was travelling. You could store several bits of information that could be instantly retrieved when you needed them. But, to be honest, I don’t really miss it,” says Sankar.

I was mostly interested, for the purpose of this article, in time management tools, all of which promised to make time an ally. I know a lot of it is marketing drivel, but, for someone who keeps losing control of the day ever so often, I liked the way it sounded.

A majority of time management apps on this planet are indebted to a man named Francesco Cirillo. Back when he was a university student, Cirillo invented the Pomodoro (Italian for tomato) technique, a time management tool named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer that supposedly helped him maximise his time. Cirillo, who runs an eponymous, Berlin-based consulting firm and appears to be in his late 40s, has achieved a fair bit: he has authored The Pomodoro Technique; created the Agile Online Training Program; helped F1 racing teams to improve processes; and, among others, helped an Italian government agency to get the most of a “disorganised” team of developers. I sent Cirillo’s company an interview request, but I’m yet to hear back from them. Perhaps, it is time for them to move to a more effective email app.

(Image: Daniel Mingook-kim via Unsplash)

Forest was the first productivity app that sort of worked for me. The app encourages users to grow a “digital” tree—if you leave the app, the poor tree dies and you have to start all over again. I don’t particularly care for digital trees, or for the app’s tie-up with an NGO that plants an actual tree for every 2,500 coins you earn on it—the global data centre industry, which underpins the internet, accounts for 3 percent of global power consumption and about 2 percent of greenhouse gas emissions—but the fact that Forest actually helped me stay on track for 25 minutes came as a revelation.

My initial successes were built on a bed of withered trees, but I could indeed see light at the end of a long tunnel. Over the course of about two weeks, I grew an entire forest, I suppose, or at least a grove, but there was one problem. The Forest app was on my phone, and you know how it is—every time I would tend to a tree, I would also be tempted to check on all the exciting things that were happening in the world around me. What I wanted, I decided, was an app that would slap me across the face every time I reached for my phone.

Focus Booster, a desktop app, did not cause me bodily harm for my transgressions, but it took the phone out of the equation. If you are looking for a Pomodoro technique-based desktop app, I’d heartily recommend this one. You’ll have to put up with ‘Alice from Focus Booster’, though, who will be in regular touch with you just so you can visualise your progress, but the emails are a minor inconvenience for getting some work done.

In the two weeks since I started using these two apps, the increase in my productivity has been marginal, but for someone who is always ‘making up’ time, that’s saying a lot.