Finding the Right Time Slice Duration

Choosing the right length for your time slice is an art rather than a science. Generally speaking, a duration between fifteen and twenty-five minutes is best; choosing a duration of less than fifteen minutes might lead to a lot of time “getting into” the task and little time being productive. A duration of more than twenty-five minutes may result in your concentration beginning to fade before the end of the time slice.

The Pomodoro Technique advocates a rhythm of twenty-five minutes of work, followed by a five minute break, with a longer fifteen minute break every fourth time slice. This is not at all a bad starting point, but your chosen duration should take into account your own personal variables, such as your current mental and physical states, to maximize motivation and help you overcome procrastination.

If you feel resistant to starting a task, it is most appropriate to choose a short duration, even as little as 5 minutes. Why? Because a lot of procrastination behavior is caused by our primitive “fight-or-flight response.” This mechanism sits quietly deep inside the brain (within the amygdala, to be specific) until it senses a threat. As its sole purpose is to keep us alive, the fight-or-flight mechanism reacts with astonishing speed, and doesn’t have time to bother with the details of the threat. Whether it’s a potential mugger staring you in the face or an impending visit from the overbearing mother-in-law doesn’t matter. Both make you feel uncomfortable, because both could have a negative impact. Rather than take the time to evaluate these distinctions, fight-or-flight sends an impulse throughout the body, a signal to the most important components to either address the problem or avoid it. Everything else is put on hold until action is taken or a “false alarm” is perceived. Unfortunately, in the modern world, the frequent misfirings of the amygdala can become the root cause of stress, anxiety disorders, and similar health concerns.

Fortunately, despite their stranglehold on our behavior, the amygdala are not particularly clever, and it’s possible to “trick” them, thereby overcoming procrastination. By creating small, well-defined tasks that you can “pass under the radar” without triggering the fight-or-flight response, any stress or performance pressure is reduced. After all, there is nothing disconcerting about writing a segment of code to verify the correct formatting of an e-mail address. But when you focus on the fact that your modest bit of code is an important part of your bank’s Web site security upgrade, things take on a little more weight. Focus on the small, docile tasks rather than the looming “big picture.”

Such “stealth” tasks should focus on getting you started on the work, have very limited scope, be very explicit, have easily reachable goals, and take relatively little time to complete. So instead of planning on spending the next three weeks (only three weeks!) to compile an important report for upper management that can make or break your career, try something smaller: “Spend five minutes writing down any five things that should be in the report, then take a fifteen minute break”. Which option is more likely to lead to procrastinate?

Once you have begun a task, things become much easier and begin to fall into place. You might even find it difficult to stop every twenty-five minutes to enjoy a well-deserved break. There isn’t much point in forcing yourself to take breaks you really don’t want, and it can actually harm your motivation level. Just as you should feel free to take guilt-free breaks, you should also feel free to continue working when you don’t want to stop.