04 The Pomodoro Method: Hone Your Focus

Distraction isn’t a character flaw, it’s a reality of our world. We’re trained to chase five-second dopamine hits, and then we wonder why deep work feels impossible. In today's episode we will show you how a simple 25-minute focus loop can rebuild your attention, protect your energy, and move big projects forward without the dread an axiety.

We walk through the Pomodoro method in plain terms. You’ll learn why short, bounded sprints reduce overwhelm and what smart breaks look like so your momentum doesn’t vanish into a death scroll. Anyone can do almost anything for 25 minutes and that truth turns procrastination into progress.

You’ll hear where this method shines and when to skip it. Most importantly, we treat Pomodoro as a servant, not a master. Start with one round today. If it clicks, repeat and stack wins across the week. Protecting focus protects energy, and protected energy multiplies time one small sprint at a time.

If this helps, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s stuck on a big task, and leave a quick review so more people can reclaim their focus.

Blinn Bates - BlinnBates.com

Woods & Bates, P.C. - Woodsandbates.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Focus Feels Hard Now
• 0:50 Meet The Pomodoro Method
• 1:58 Why Short Bursts Work
• 3:28 Step-By-Step Setup
• 4:35 Breaks, Momentum, And Deep Work
• 5:33 When Not To Use It
• 5:42 One-Round Challenge And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:00

Welcome back. Today I want to talk about our focus. If you ever sit down to work and find yourself constantly distracted or anywhere constantly distracted, it's not our discipline that's a problem, it's the environment that we're in. We have somewhat been conditioned now to watch five, 10 second videos, and our focus has become very, very poor. So today I want to introduce you to a very simple focus tool, which is called the Pomodoro method. This was created a long, long time ago, and what it is is something that's built around short focused work sessions followed by breaks. So we're going to do this intentionally. And what a quote unquote Pomodoro is, is a 25-minute focused work session followed by five-minute break repeating on a cycle. So after we do that four times, then we're going to take a little bit longer break, 15-30 minutes. And the goal is that we're going to accomplish a lot in this focused 25-minute period over and over again. So it's going to give us a clear start, clear stop, and a recovery point. And why it works is because it can it creates this container of focus where we have this 25 minutes and it kind of tricks our brain into reducing the overwhelm of all the things that we have to do and focuses on this one thing that we're going to get done. So we're not committing to hours, even if the project as a whole may take hours and hours. We're just committing ourselves to 25 minutes, we're going to work on it, and then we're going to give ourselves a break. It's going to limit our distractions because we're going to put boundaries around this while we do it. And it's going to help us overcome procrastination because it's going to force us to start. We're going to have to start doing something. So this is kind of in line with the brain science of how we handle attention and fatigue. Anyone can do anything for 25 minutes. And if we are thinking in 25 minute increments, we're not as overwhelmed, typically. So how are we going to do this? We're going to start by picking one task. So one thing we want to do, the more specific, the better. I am going to draft article four, which is the trust distribution provisions of XYZ trust. So that's very specific. That's what I'm going to do in this 25 minute segment. I'm going to eliminate all my distractions. So I'm going to silence my notifications, whether that be turn off the phone, put it on vibrate, put do not disturb on my office phone, close any of my unnecessary tabs on my computer so I'm not tempted to stray from what I'm doing. Shut my door. Maybe I'm going to put in some noise canceling headphones, put on some light jazz music or whatever music of your choosing. Then I'm going to set my timer. So I need an actual timer. I'm going to set a timer for 25 minutes and I'm going to work on that task. Now, something may pop up while I'm doing this. Something may occur to me. I may need to remember something, and I don't want to get distracted. So I want to have a piece of paper sitting there so I can write that down and then just get it out of my brain and I can come back to it later. But I can keep my focus on what I'm supposed to be doing. When that timer dings, we're done. That's it. We're going to take our five-minute break, and this is going to build some consistency here. So after our five-minute break, we'll do it again. And then once we've done it four times, we're going to take a little bit longer break. Stand up, move around, use the restroom, get something to drink. But we want to kind of stay in the zone so we don't want to totally distract ourselves. We don't want to pick up our phone and start scrolling because that might ruin our momentum. This technique is really good for getting things done, but it's really good for focusing on deep work, things like writing, reviewing documents, studying projects we all have that we've been avoiding. Things that feel overwhelming as a whole, when broken down, can be accomplished fairly easily. And once you start going, you're going to develop some momentum. What we don't want to use this for is days when we have, you know, I got back-to-back meetings all day, or I do want to work for three or four hours and I'm in the zone and I don't want to interrupt it with this five-minute break. That's fine. Um, it's not real good for reactive type work, but this is a tool that can serve you and should serve you, not the other way around. This tool should not become your master. So today I challenge you to pick one task that you've been putting off or one task that you need to get done. Set your timer for 25 minutes, do one round. Just do one round today and see how it is. See how you like it. And if you like it, do it again. Uh, momentum typically follows action. So when we use our focus in this way intentionally, we're not only protecting our focus, but we're protecting our energy. And when we protect our energy, we're maximizing our time, and that's how you elevate your life.