The Flowtime Technique

If you have trouble staying on task and consistently reaching a highly productive state of nirvana, congratulations! You’re a human! However focused productivity gurus on the internet may seem, no one is immune to distractions. This is why strategies like the Pomodoro technique have become widely popular in recent years.

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The idea behind the Pomodoro technique is to time 25 minutes of work on a single task without distractions, followed by a mandatory 5 minute break. The thought behind this is that most people lose focus after 25 minutes and productivity begins waning unless they take a few minutes to reset. The single-task focus is also an essential ingredient to streamline their effort and make for a more efficient block of work time.

While this technique works well for many, some folks like myself find it somewhat restrictive. There’s an undated version called the Flowtime technique which has quickly been gaining momentum. The concept is much the same, but with the slight difference that the periods of work and rest are not strictly timed to adhere to a predetermined schedule. Instead, the idea is to work until you feel you need a break, so as not to disrupt a “flow state”. You should still track your work and rest periods, but allow your body to set the pace of work instead of the clock.

The advantages of this technique over the traditional Pomodoro comes down to harnessing the magic of getting into a flowstate. Authors in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation have defined flowstate as a state where “time can pass faster or slower and the environment is hardly or no longer perceived. Attention is fully invested in the task at hand, and the person functions at his or her fullest capacity”. By allowing time to pass naturally without a timer, we can ideally slip into this highly productive state and work in chunks of time more in-tune with our internal clocks.

I can personally vouch for how using the Flowtime technique has greatly improved my ability to accomplish a task in a single efficient swoop once I’m “in the zone” instead of needlessly breaking up my focus. If you’ve looking to increase your own productivity, giving the Flowstate technique a try could be the perfect combination of structure and flexibility to work with your attention instead of against it.

 

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