After our recent LW Dojo in Berlin we had a conversation on our mailing list about pomodoros.
How do we handle it if the bell rings but we are in flow? Is it good to honor the bell and take a pause or is it more effective to continue working to keep in flow?
The original setting of 25 minutes came from the 25 minutes that Francesco Cirillo tomato shaped timer had naturally. The LW Study Hall seems to use 32 minutes work with 8 minutes pause. If you have experimented with different lengths, what worked for you?
Did you come to any surprising conclusions about pomodoros while working with them, that might be interesting to other people?
I'm not sure if you've read Mihály Csíkszentmihályi or not, but he argued that flow states are more likely when a task is more complex/challenging, and the person has a high level of appropriate skill that makes it possible (with substantial effort) to complete the task.
For me this often occurs while programming, sailing, or doing math- especially if I need to solve a new problem with those skills that will be especially challenging.
Once I'm in 'flow' it is a distinct mental experience - I am totally into it and lose any sense of time passing, or of needing to motivate myself until I am interrupted either by my own body, or by something external.
Cal Newport in Deep Work (his own word for flow work) defines "Deep Work" as anything that requires skills that would take at least a year to develop if a person was already generally educated, smart, and motivated.
I'm not sure that's an accurate description for Cal Newport's Deep Work. High intensity deliberate practice that you can only do for short amounts of time per session is Deep Work in Newport's model.