How I Use the Pomodoro Method | Productivity & Focus in Grad School

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Hello, friends! If you’ve ever done even a smidge of googling on productivity tips you’ve probably heard of the pomodoro method! It’s a super popular tactic for trying to increase focus and motivation, but how does it work and when does it work best? I’ve been a big fan of the pomodoro method since I started grad school, so today, I thought I’d share how I use the pomodoro method as a student and my favorite was to implement it for long projects in academia.

What is the pomodoro method?

The pomodoro method is a productivity technique that encourages you to work in timed increments with small breaks in between. Usually, one pomodoro is 25 minutes, then you take a 5 minute break before doing another 25 minute pomodoro. After you repeat this process 4 times, you take a longer break of up to 30 minutes. Though it might seem like a lot of breaks, during the pomodoros, you are meant to focus entirely on the task at hand without any distractions so that you can get more done with less time. By breaking up your work into smaller increments, the pomodoro method tries to reduce fatigue from long work days and increase focus & motivation.

My Favorite Pomodoro Timers:

How I use the pomodoro method:

The pomodoro method can be really useful for work in grad school and academia because oftentimes the projects we work on are super long and frankly, they can be kind of tedious! Though I don’t use the pomodoro method on a daily basis, it’s a productivity tool I use at least 2-3 times per week and I find that it’s especially helpful in these situations:

• Starting tasks. This is how I most often use the pomodoro method - to start a task that is kind of a pain in the butt! I usually like to to dive into work first thing in the mornings and I find that setting a timer helps me get off the ground in the mornings.

• Low motivation. The pomodoro method is also great for getting out of a rut! I usually run out of work steam early afternoon but that doesn’t mean I run out of things I need to do! When my motivation is lower, starting a pomodoro helps me at least get something done rather than nothing at all.

• Long projects. I find that the pomodoro method is also especially good for long projects because with long projects I often feel like I’m making no progress (even if I am!). When the tasks are long and difficult (e.g., cleaning or analyzing data or writing a paper), pomodoros help me feel like I’m getting something done. Rather than not being able to check of the big to do of “writing a paper”, I can look at all of the pomodoros I completed and feel like I really accomplished something! It’s all about the framing!

• To be more aware. Finally, the pomodoro method has been hugely helpful in becoming more aware of how I’m actually using my time and how long I can actually do focused work before becoming distracted. On average, I’m usually only able to complete about 4 hours of focused work (about 10-12 pomodoros) before I get restless, so rather than trying force more than 4 hours of focused work, I work on less taxing tasks after I’ve hit the 4 hour mark.

Guidelines for making the pomodoro method work for you:

Though I discussed at the start of this blog post how the typical pomodoro method works, I personally use an altered pomodoro method based on many experiments with my own motivation. Since the goal of the pomodoro method is simply to allow you to be more focused and productive with the time that you have, I think it’s totally appropriate to revise the method in a way that fits your productivity style. It’s easy to give up on a productivity method when it “doesn’t work” for you straight out of the box, but I’ve found that it’s almost always more beneficial to frame something as one tool in a tool belt of productivity techniques that you can pull out and use when the time is right! So, here are some general guidelines for how to make the pomodoro method work for you and ways you can alter the pomodoro method to better suit your own work style.

• Experiment with time frames. The standard pomodoro method recommends 25 minutes of work with a 5 minute break. I usually work in increments of 15-20 minutes instead because it seems to work better for me. Experiment with different amounts of time and see what seems to fit your work and your attention span! Honestly, 15 minutes might not sound like a lot but you’d be surprised by how much you can get done in 15 focused minutes.

• Allow yourself to get lost in a task. There’s a lot of mixed advice out there about whether you should stop working after finishing a pomodoro and force yourself to take a break or allow yourself to keep working if you are still focused. For me, allowing myself to get lost in the task is actually the whole point! I use the pomodoro method specifically to help motivate me to start more tedious tasks or get started on longer-term projects so if I’m able to use a pomodoro to help my mind focus and get lost in the project, then I like to let myself keep working even if the pomodoro is technically over.

• Don’t let yourself get distracted by anything else. This one’s pretty self explanatory, but it’s vital to the pomodoro method! Because you’re usually focusing on work for small increments of time, don’t allow yourself to check any notifications or look at anything else but your work for those 15, 20, or 25 minutes! You can always check those notifications during your breaks.

• Check those pomodoros off your to do list! Part of the whole benefit of using a pomodoro to motivate yourself is getting the satisfaction of being able to check those suckers off once you’re done! It always makes me feel like I’ve accomplished a lot when I’m able to see how many pomodoros I’ve completed.

Though I don’t use the pomodoro method every day (sometimes, I prefer to set a timed goal where I make a promise to myself that I’ll get XYZ submitted by noon!), it’s a super useful tool for jumpstarting my motivation and feeling accomplished during long projects! Do you use the pomodoro method? Does it work for you? Let me know in the comments below!

How I Set Goals for the New Year as a PhD Student & Academic | Goal Setting in Academia

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Ahh, goal setting. Boy do I have a lot of thoughts about goal setting haha! As much as a I often roll my eyes at its prevalence in the productivity world, goal setting is one of the most research-backed ways of getting things done - especially if you’re setting goals that are specific, measurable and achievable. But what happens when you’re a grad student or an academic and you’re working on projects that take months, if not years (IFYKYK)? Here’s how I like to goal set at the top of the year:

TIPS FOR GOAL SETTING IN ACADEMIA

Some of the challenges for goal setting in academia and in any other profession that require lots of long-term planning are:

1. there is often an overwhelming amount of stuff to do.

2. there are LOTS of demands on your time.

3. it’s often difficult to feel like you’re making progress on long-term projects.

4. goals are often changing or need to be altered to fit changing situations and expectations.

These challenges make goal-setting especially difficult because it’s important to make sure that goals are specific and achievable. When your projects are super long, tedious, and feel like they’re never going to get done, it can be super discouraging (at least for me!). So, my main tips for setting goals in academia is to keep a couple of things in mind:

1. Flexibility: One of the things I find especially challenging about research projects is how they feel like they are never done and are constantly changing/bouncing around. Most of the time you submit a paper, it gets rejected or at least requires a relatively time-consuming revision, so a project that felt like it was “done” was only really done temporarily and gets bounced back onto your to-do list. For me, this means that I have to goal set on a digital platform. As much as I love a written to do list and used to love goal setting in a notebook, nowadays, it’s completely impractical because the deadlines and requirements on my projects change on a regular basis. With my goals on a digital platform, I’m able to update my goals as needed without feeling too stressed by the change 😊

2. Keep your goal setting low pressure: On long-term projects, goals often change and update as the situation changes and it can feel like you’re not making any progress. So when goal setting, I try to focus on keeping my goals low pressure. A common piece of advice is to make sure that your goals are achievable. I find that this is especially important in grad school or academia because we often have such pressure from the industry to publish 1,000 papers. Remember that you’re a human. You can only do so much with your time, and that’s okay.

   We also face a lot of pressure as a society to set all of these lofty goals at the beginning of the year, but it’s worth remembering that you can always update and change your goals - no matter WHAT day of the year it is. As I’m writing this, it’s January 8th and I’m just now starting to set up my goals. It’s okay to take your time thinking about what you really want out of a year - what’s most important to you - and what is most achievable that year.

3. Focus on breaking things down: In order to make these big, long-term goals specific, measurable and achievable, you HAVE to focus on breaking down those big projects! I like to break things down into small pieces that I can tackle by month, week, and day - which I’ll talk more about next!

MY GOAL SETTING BREAKDOWN

Alright, now let’s get down to the actual the nitty gritty about how I actually break down my goals for the year!

(1) Theme of the Year

I like to pick a theme for each year depending on what I feel like I need for that year and what I’ve experienced in the past year. In the beginning of 2020, my theme for the year was being my own advocate because I’d experienced a lot of things in my program that felt like they were out of my control. In 2021, my theme was peace. This year, my theme for the year is to make space - because over the past year, I’ve often felt like I didn’t have enough time for my work, for my social life, or for my own well-being. This year, I want to focus on what I do have time for and realizing that oftentimes, the belief that I don’t have time or space for certain parts of my life is really something I’ve imposed on myself and something I’d like to reframe in my approach to life. I usually put this theme of the year on a post-it note or a letterboard as a constant reminder.

(2) Divvy it up by Personal vs. Work

Next, I usually divide up my goals by personal and work goals. Though at one point I would put all of my goals in the same document, I now prefer to put goals into separate personal and work notes because I have a tendency to overly focus on my work goals and not my personal ones. Having them separated helps me devote time and energy to my personal goals when I choose to set aside time for personal goals without being distracted by all the work I think I should be doing 😛

(3) Categories

After dividing it up by personal and work, I categorize goals into 4-5 broad categories. For my work goals, it usually involves admin, research, teaching, and dissertation. For personal this year, I’ve included categories like blogging, travel, hobbies, and wedding. Within those broad categories I’ll note important dates and big high-level projects within each of those categories (e.g., defend my dissertation, spring semester or book winter trip). I’ll also usually set numeric goals for myself in each category such as hitting a certain number of average pageviews on my website by the end of the year or submitting a certain number of research papers for publication by the end of the year. Though I don’t always hit those numbers, I find it motivating to have numbers in mind as long as they don’t seem too unachievable! 😊

(4) Break it Down by Time Frame.

Finally, I focus on breaking things down by time frame. For me, the important thing about planning for the year is to keep things big picture. I break down my annual goalsetting notes by month so that for each category I know what my goals are for the year, but also how that shakes out for each month. I also typically only shake out the smaller goals for the first 4-5 months and then fill out the rest of the months as the year progresses. For example, I know that this year, I’d like to work on getting 5 research papers under review, so I’ve divvied it up so that I spend January (when I’m on winter break) working on getting 2 papers out and then the rest of the spring semester (when I’m busy with my dissertation) I’ll go at more of a slower speed at 1 per month. That’s the timeline for now, but it can certainly changed based on how the semester shakes out! So, rather than just making one huge list of all the lofty things I want to do during the year, I also try to break it down by month so the plan to get there is more concrete.

So, how do I use these goals in everyday life?

Well, since I like to keep my goals on a digital note (usually on icloud notes), I re-visit them on a weekly basis to figure out what I need to do each week. If I know I need to send in a paper by the end of the month, I’ll delegate a week to cleaning and analyzing the data and pick another week to get the paper written. Even though it might sound a little over the top, I find that going through this methodical process of breaking everything down means I’m less likely to get overwhelmed and not so hard on myself. It also makes me feel more like I’ve achieved something in a career where positive reinforcement is rare 🤣

Welp, I hope this helps you set your own goals for the new year as a grad or phd student! Have any other questions? Leave me a comment - I’d love to hear from you!

The Best Notetaking Apps for Grad Students | My Favorite iPad & Macbook Notetaking Apps

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The most common questions I get on my blog posts are what apps I use as a grad student and specifically, what apps I use for notetaking! Today, I'm happy to share with ya'll my TOP FIVE notetaking apps and how I use each of them in academic and personal life. They each have their own pros and cons and what works for me may not always work for you - so I hope that sharing my experiences will help you determine what app is the best fit for you work style!

First Off - My Tech Setup:

I have a Macbook Pro and iPad Pro that I primarily use for notetaking. The reason I mention this is because it has a huge impact on what notetaking apps I use. I also have an iPhone and an Apple Watch that also work together with my Macbook and iPad so working on platforms that all sync seamlessly between my devices makes my life a lot easier and has a huge impact on what platforms I end up using.

My MacBook Pro Setup

• 13 inch MacBook Pro

• MacBook Pro Hard Case

• Keyboard Cover (best, thinnest keyboard cover ever!)

• Apple Magic Mouse

• Apple Magic Keyboard

My iPad Pro Setup

• 12.9 inch iPad Pro, 256 GB

• Apple Pencil 2

• Apple Pencil case

• Thin case from Amazon

• Keyboard case from Amazon

• Matte screen protector

(1) ONENOTE

OneNote is hands down my top used note-taking app of all time. I've been using OneNote for over ten years and for as long as I've owned an iPad. It's free on the iPad and usually free for most students with Microsoft Office. I love OneNote because it has pretty much any feature you could possibly ask for. Is it a little clunkier than some newer apps? Yes, absolutely - but every time I try to completely switch over to a new notetaking platform, I always end up back on OneNote because it has remained the most consistent and offers the most variety in features.

As a grad student and academic, I use pretty much every feature under the sun on OneNote. I love being able to type, draw, insert voice memos, insert pictures, embed links and videos, and attach entire files to OneNote files. On top of that, OneNote also has a really convenient tool that allows you to share an entire note as a PDF to collaborators. This tool has been so convenient for me because I often think through research projects on OneNote - I'll copy and paste images and tables, draw out models, insert output files and then export that all into one easy document that my collaborators can review rather having to send them 100 files to review. With how many different files and components are necessary in academic life, I find that OneNote is the most powerful when it comes to putting that all together.

I've also found that OneNote tends to be the most reliable platform for how powerful it is. Usually within seconds of adding something on my iPad, I can already see it on my laptop which is a huge help when I'm bouncing between the two devices. Though it's structure may be a little clunkier than some newer notetaking platforms with how high stakes some projects are, OneNote has always served me best in reliability and consistency. If I had to give up every notetaking platform but one, OneNote would be my pick.

Best For: reliability, consistency, and an already organized platform that has pretty much any feature you could possibly want. OneNote is my favorite platform for working on research projects and keeping all project ideas organized and separated. In my experience, it also syncs seamlessly and is the most consistent across devices.

Some Cons: If you're someone who doesn't like a pre-created structure, OneNote may be a struggle for you. It can be a little clunky because there aren't as many keyboard shortcut available to use and you are forced to organize things by notebooks and sections.

(2) ICLOUD NOTES

A close second for notetaking is actually Apple's in-house notes app. The notes app actually also offers the ability to create folders, different text sizes/styles, and different colors. Though it's more limited in what it can offer, the notes app wins by a landslide when it comes to jotting down to do lists and shorter notes. It's an app that I visit every single day for work-related thoughts but also personal notes on what recipes I want to make, books I want to read, or workouts I want to try. Every list I've ever made generally lives on my notes app.

Personally, I use my iCloud notes most for both personal and work-related planning and goal setting. On a monthly and semester long basis, I like having the flexibility to update and check off the goals I set on a simple, easy to use platform. For daily planning, I use my iCloud notes on busier days where I need to check off errands and it's nice to be able to see everything on a smaller screen as I'm running around!

Another huge pro of iCloud notes for me is that syncing is super fast and seamless. Because I use nearly all apple products, that means I can access my tasks and goals on any of my devices which makes my life SO much easier.

Best For: Apple users of course! Also great for planning and organizing tasks and to-do lists because it has such a simple interface and isn't too overwhelming. Free for apple users.

Some Cons: May be somewhat lacking if you are someone who likes to have a lot of different tools for notetaking since it's so simple and to the point.

(3) NOTABILITY

I've talked extensively about Notability because it (along with Goodnotes at number 5 on my list) are two of the most popular apps for taking notes on an iPad - and for good reason! For me, Notability functions as my filing cabinet for books and articles that have A LOT of notes on them (aka when I'm writing a paper on a specific article's theory or if I'm reading the article for a class and need to highlight and take notes on the article pretty extensively). Notability is by far the best, most intuitive tool for PDF annotating because all of the annotation tools are available right at the top, you can flag your favorite pages, and even leave post-it notes.

The way in which you organize files in Notability is also relatively similar to a filing cabinet in which you would store each document separately but in different file folders. This is different than a platform like OneNote where you either attach a PDF file to the note or insert a printout of the pages onto a note. The issue with storing each file individually is that sometimes my notability page can get a bit unruly and it takes up a lot of space - causing slow downs in syncing or no syncing at all when my devices run out of space.

Best For: Annotating and taking notes on existing PDFs! Super, super great if you're a grad student reading 1000000000 pages of articles/books each week and don't want to waste paper printing it all out.

Some Cons: Syncing tends to be slower than comparable platforms. Because files are stored separately, organizing everything can be time consuming and not very intuitive. Paid app on both Mac and iPad so you need to buy both apps in order to sync across them, which can be expensive!

(4) NOTION

Alright y'all - it's time to talk about Notion. Notion is hot, hot, hot in the productivity space and I have some thoughts. I actually do love Notion and am using it as I type this! - But, there are pros and cons to every tool and I think that's exactly how everyone should view Notion - as a tool rather than an all encompassing life management platform.

I'm going to start with the goods. Notions database functions are completely unmatched - seriously. If you need a database that has notes within the database where you can link a million different notes together and create different ways to display that information - you NEED Notion. The two primary ways I use Notion are for planning & writing blog posts and for doing literature reviews when writing research papers. Both of these tasks benefit hugely from having linked databases where I can tag concepts, link notes to other notes, and sort through those notes in multiple different ways.

My biggest gripe though is Notion's instability. If you do a quick reddit or google search on "is Notion down?" you'll find tons of people wondering why they can't access their Notion notes. I've been using Notion for several years now and though I've only experienced Notion being down 4-5 times over that time period, that's 4-5 times more than I've experienced it with any other notetaking app. A huge reason for this is because Notion does not have an offline mode. When other notetaking apps are offline, you can continue to access and work on your notes, though the updates you make on those notes might not sync until you're reconnected. In my experience, when Notion is offline, I either cannot access any of my notes at all OR all of the updates I make on notes while offline are completely wiped as soon as I'm back online.

One time, Notion was down while I was preparing for a big research meeting (of which I was the lead) and as a result, my notes were completely lost and inaccessible to me until several hours after the meeting was over. For me, this is a HUGE dealbreaker in a notetaking app. Prior to this experience, I'd been considering Notion for a majority of my notes but after this experience - I now use it more as a temporary tool for organizing my thoughts rather than a place to store long-term high stakes notes.

Best For: Great for linked databases! In grad school - awesome for organizing and connecting articles/article notes for a literature search.

Some Cons: No offline mode so when Notion is offline, you can't access your notes and any updates you make while you're unknowingly offline might not be saved!

(5) GOODNOTES

Though Goodnotes is #5 on my list, it is by no means least! I use Goodnotes on a daily basis because it serves as my digital planner platform and I absolutely LOVE using it for digital planning. Because of the way Goodnotes is formatted, I find that it's best for use as a digital planner because it allows you to visually see your documents as "notebooks" where you can customize the covers of each notebook. I've found that this has psychologically helped me with the transition from paper to digital planning because it still feels like I'm opening up a notebook to visit the pages of a planner.

Goodnotes definitely rivals Notability when it comes to ability to annotate documents and has many of the same annotation tools. I think both are comparable when it comes to this function. For me personally, I just like to have my planner function and my school article notetaking function separated so I house them in different apps.

Best For: Using as a digital planner or notebook! Also really good for annotating documents and taking notes/highlighting things on a digital textbook or article

Some Cons: Similar to notability, sometimes syncing is a little slow and both the macbook app and iOS iPad app are paid so you have to buy both apps in order for it to sync across devices.

Honorable Mention: EVERNOTE

Although Evernote is a very popular notetaking app, I do not personally use it for notetaking anymore so I didn't include it in the main list - However, it has easily become my favorite app for another reason - as a digital filing cabinet.

Anytime I receive a paper document, I try to digitize it as quickly as possible so that I don't lose it and can find it easily later on. Evernote has an amazing app called Scannable that works seamlessly in tandem with Evernote where you can scan the document and then immediately file it away in Evernote. This also makes it super easy to find anything I've ever scanned because it's already filed away into the correct category and is searchable based on a couple key words. Though it's not directly related to notetaking, I've found this so, so, so useful and it has saved me so much time in the long run that I thought it was worth an honorable mention!

Best For: Digitizing and saving documents!

Some Cons: Once you hit a certain upload amount or a certain device count, evernote is a month to month paid subscription. If you're sticking with the free version like I am, you can only sync 2 devices and usually can only upload 60 MB of content per month.

Whew that was a long one! Long story short though - every notetaking platform has its own pros and cons and I find that it always helps to view each platform as a tool rather than the end-all-be-all-only-app-you'll-ever-use. Not all of them are good for everything and you definitely don't NEED all of these notetaking apps. It's just about finding the tool that you need for your specific notetaking style that will help make your life easier :)

I hope this was helpful! Have any other questions about notetaking, apps, productivity, studying - all of the above? Leave me a comment or send me a message - I'd love to hear from you!