Do these 7 Simple Things in a Pomodoro break that improves productivity — [work/study at home version]
By: Carolina Li
Tags: Stress Management, Work From Home, Workathome, Time Management, Productivity

Regardless of how big your household is, vacuuming your workspace can take less than 15 minutes. And if you are a heavy eraser user, or, a pet owner, dust can build up in your living space fairly quickly. The reason I don’t recommend vacuuming a larger radius of space is the following: you need a small fraction of your break time to disconnect the task you are doing at hand, in this case, vacuuming, to the next task, say work on your next Pomodoro session. For your mind to regain calmness and be ready for the more mind griding task that comes up. You can also run your Romba if all the wires or other items on the ground have been reorganized.

3. Throw out the garbage.

It is hard to concentrate on almost anything if you have a smelly kitchen garbage bag that is yelling to be taking out. During quarantine, the time we spent at our home office is significantly longer than usual, so does the time we spent eating at home. It’s best to do it in the day time when the sun is still out, so you can be delighted with the freshness of the sun-bathed trees and the friendly greetings from the dog walkers. A note to this tip: it’s best to have your garbage bag ready at the door at the beginning of your break session, so you can get back to your computer before the timer.

4. Take out clean dishes/put in dirty dishes

Completing either of these two tasks can fill your break easily, especially for those who have more delicate dishwares. The whole take-out and take -in process can take up to two break sessions, but if you find it hard to stop completing either task, it’s better to do it during a 30 minutes break where you can combine another task, say vacuuming/sweeping the kitchen floor.

The dirty dishes are ready to be washed!

5. Run the cleaning appliances.

If you are successfully putting all the dirty dishes in the washing machine, you can start running it, the time it takes for a dishwasher to complete a cycle varies from brands and settings, but the rule of thumb is to make sure the clean dishes are ready before mealtime!

Since it takes less than 1 minutes to get your dishwasher going, the rest of the break time can be used to either collect dirty clothes into the laundry basket, put the dirty clothes into the washing machine and run it, take the washed ones and transferred them into the dryer, take the clean ones out and spread it on your bed for folding next time.

6. Spend time with your pet.

Poppy(my little princess) enjoys a five-star head massage.

A 10 or 15 minutes break is probably too tight for a dog walking session, but some indoor playtimes between you and your pet can definitely be inserted in between your work session. As for myself, I often spend the break time petting my cats, where I will go back to my laptop when they find me too annoying to be around.

7. Put on an eye mask.

If you are studying or working at home during the lockdown, chances are you might experience a slightly disrupted circadian rhythm, and that eye bag is started to look saggy. Wash your hand, take out your eye mask, simply dispose it when your 15 minutes timer is calling you back. It frees your hand from touching your face say…if you are putting on a face mask, so you are still able to do other chores at the same time. And the bonus for glasses-wearers — you can still see things clearly!

That’s it, 7 simple things that can refresh your overworked brain and optimize your work/study systems.

If you haven't decided on any particular household chores to do yet, simply write out the random popping micro-stressing items on a post-it note during a work session, and view/process them during the breaks. In general, the tasks you do during break should serve for the projects that require longer concentration-time in a work session.