Counting Tomatoes

Around this time, every year, I rethink objectives. Cyclic rituals, like New Year's resolutions, may seem silly in this post-agrarian age, but I find they help punctuate time in the daily stream of affairs. A pause button, where we can freeze-frame the blur of the parade, pan around and take in the themes or make fun of the floats. If we've been chasing the parade all this time, we probably haven't seen anything new. That's how parades work. Of course, if we run the opposite direction, we have an analog fast forward, especially if it's a real sucky parade. But you get the picture.

Each year I notice something new that helps set perspective. This year it was the insidious nature of deadlines. The name alone evokes a static sense of direction. They say the only difference between a goal and dream, is that a goal has a deadline. But then again, "they" also say a bunch of stupid stuff.

I'd like to say I don't really listen to "them", but "they" do seem to have some outposts in my head. I doubt the "they" in my mind even exists as such in the outside world, but I notice their representatives are at almost every internal council meeting. Along with these outsiders, I also have had a few strong internal allies at the meetings over the years, there is always: "who gives a fuck." He's not the most positive guy or best social influence, but he's a good debater that doesn't get tied up in manipulative rhetoric. On his side of the table also sit more soft-spoken and nuanced friends, like "everyone's doing the best they can" and "don't take anything personally." They've always been a comfort. At the head of one side of the table sits compassion. I don't really understand her, but she connects me at times, when I listen, to all the wonder and glory of the flawed humans we are, each with the spark of kindness, bravery and ferocious love in the face of vast ignorance, false assurance and petty self concern. At the other end of the table sits severity. Things will never be perfect, all is impermanence and everything of value can be lost. He has no patience for stupidity, wasted effort or excuses for being anything less than our full potential. It's a tough crowd that makes for some lively discussions, and they aren't particularly enamored that I've labeled them over the years, my "ship of fools" from a Grateful Dead song. But lately I've been discovering my own true place at the table, which is a stillness, deep inside, that seems to put the ship back on course. This year, I will seek to deepen this. Meditation has really been the key here, and everyday I've been fitting in an hour and often two, to find these bearings; this year I will make it more a priority, more two than one. Resolution number 1.

But back to the point about deadlines. Ever since I can remember, this has been true north for the majority of my time. Homework, work, forms, bills, all the minutia of activities organized for living and participating in the hive. With retirement dropping some of the major pull on this compass, I've been searching for new, or older half-forgotten ways, to re-engage with time in a more qualitative fashion.

I've made mistakes and came to some realizations. I think the first realization was that I'll always be driven from within, but without the external to set the scope of these drives and objectives, there is more I'd like to do than one, or several lifetimes, can accommodate. At least in terms of objectives. I've always known, and often forget, that the sum of desires will always be more attractive than the pursuit of any single one. So there's the monkey and his nuts syndrome. Reputedly this was a trap used in India. By securing a jar half full of goodies that a monkey can reach into with his hand but which he can't withdraw if he grabs any, they catch the monkey with his paw in the jar, unwilling to let go of what is within his grasp, but not realizing that by trying to grab all he can hold, he's stuck in a same spot with nothing. A sitting duck-monkey. It was a realization I came to in my 30's, that I could have anything I wanted, but not everything I wanted. And what's this anyway about lessons that we just have learn again and again and again?

So I've always been interested in other monkeys that seem to have figured a way out of this trap. That's how I stumbled on the Pomodoro technique, and it seems to be working for me in this new context. The name, Pomodoro, comes from a timer that looks like a tomato. In time management terms, it is a way of "time-boxing." But where I found it valuable is on two fronts. The technique is basically to set out what tasks you want to involve yourself for the day. This is most effective when you have a big picture. Which I do. I'll talk about the big picture sometime, but not today. And most of my immediate tasks are related to learning, in this larger context. Pomodoro fits this approach well.

With Pomodoro, each day you add one or more tasks to your task list related to your big picture and you estimate the number of "Pomodoros" or 25 minutes increments that you will spend focused entirely on task. At the end of a Pomodoro, no matter where you are or how exciting the task, you take a break. This alone has been pretty major. By forcing these breaks, it seems to help avoid the dive-in-until-sick-of-it-and-then-postpone it for weeks until it resurfaces again and has to be restarted from scratch habit.

The 25 minutes is a block without any interruptions. Internal or external. If interrupted, you void the task and start again. So there's a game of stacking up pomo's during the day. By blocking everything else off for these short periods, it's easy to enter the "flow" state with the pomos. You may eventually be headed towards some end, but the focus is on how you are investing time increments daily. Breaks are enforced for 5 minutes or so after 25 minutes and an hour or so after 4 consecutive pomos. Or whenever you feel like it. Each pomo can be a different type of activity and you can mix and match but when you dive into a pomo, you are locked in to a single focus.

At first I thought 25 minutes would be too short, but I'm finding it just about right to totally engage and then step away. I'm also getting a better sense of what I can realistically do in a day due to a clever "Reality Check" ratio in the tool I'm using.

The trifecta of my new strategy deals with memory. It's long been known that if you really want to remember anything, the way the brain works is that optimally timed repetitions create durable, long-term memory. I use a program developed by an engineer and memory fanatic who researched these intervals brilliantly. With it, I've began to store everything I learn, and want to remember, and it's one of my pomos everyday. Anything I've high-lighted in a book, that I come across and think would be useful to know, I can ensure it doesn't just go into a slush pile of wasted attention. If I'm reading something for pure entertainment, then I pursue it as such, but it helps tremendously in discriminating the "informational" content of what I'm absorbing by asking if this is something valuable I want to keep or just trivia that will evaporate in 24 hours. Either one is ok, but it does tend to reduce the motivation to peruse endless streams of trivia. It also lets me easily pick tasks back up that haven't been worked on in weeks without having to get back up to speed.

What excites me about this approach so far is that I can spend about 5 hours a day in a focused learning state that is supporting my big picture vision, that anything I learn and want to remember I can practically guarantee I will, and that this is a process, which I'm engaged in to reach important goals ---but that the goals happen almost as a side effect. The most rewarding part is racking up those little pomos, the joy of "flow" and knowing I'll remember everything I'm learning that I want to remember. It's exciting every day to immerse myself back into the stream knowing I'm not just paddling in place but that I'm also not rowing incessantly for the big pay-off upstream.

Sort of a weird set of New Year's resolutions, but it's going to be sort of a weird year too.