Use the Tomato to Write More Words
The Pomodoro Technique has helped me to write briefs, prepare for trials, and stop procrastinating. It has also assisted me in getting more done over less time than it would ordinarily take. There’s a whole set of books and culture around it, but the method is easy to explain. Set a timer for twenty-five minutes. Work without allowing yourself any kind of interruption for that period of time. At the end of that block of time, you have earned a pomodoro (a tangible sign that you’ve completed a block of work). Take a five-minute break. Then reset the clock for another twenty-five minutes. Once you have four pomodoros, take a twenty-five minute break restart the entire process. On days when I don’t have court, my goal is to do eight to ten pomodoros. By the way, the technique was named by Francesco Cirillo, the guy who came up with I’d. Pomodoro is Italian for tomato, and apparently the timer he used was a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato. Hence, the Pomodoro technique. Here’s how the technique has helped.
* It forces you to go distraction-free for a period of time. A feature of The Pomodoro Technique is that you don’t get the pomodoro if you are interrupted by anything other than the task at hand during that period of time. You’re literally to reset the clock to twenty-five minutes. When you’re in a pomodoro, you’re ruthless and all out. Twenty-five distraction-free minutes is better than an hour of sort of doing work, while you check email, respond to texts, and take a peek at twitter.
* The work compounds over time. The gathering of pomodoros allows you build momentum. By the time you stand up for your long break, you have done 100 minutes of work. And while your brain sees the four tomatoes you’ve earned, your brain also has accumulated the product of 100 hours of work. Another session of four, it’s eight pomodoros and 200 hours of work. Here is a sad commentary on what it was like for me before I employed this method. I would spend an entire day and and have little to show for my efforts aside from a bunch of outgoing email. Just doing four pomodoros was a huge increase in my daily output.
* A side benefit is that the time is tracked. If you keep a written log of your results, you can look back over time and see exactly what you worked on. Even if you write down what you did in a line or two, you can use this technique to built a work journal.
* It gets you working. It can be depressing and overwhelming to imagine the prospect of writing an entire brief, a paper, or preparing some big project. But you can easily wrap your head around the idea of doing twenty five minutes of work. There’s a sort of working inertia here. Your body at rest wants to stay at rest. And you’ll find, at the end of 25 minutes, if you’re on a roll, that a body in motion wants to stay in motion. So, you’ll sometimes not want to stop when the bell rings twenty-five minutes. And it’s easy to jump-start after a short break.
* You trick the brain. The brain can’t wrap itself around the idea of some big nebulous thing like “write the report,” or “get some work done.” Your brain can also have trouble with things like “complete a paragraph.” But “grab a tomato” is simple and tangible for the brain to see and accomplish
* You’re moving from goal-oriented thinking to systems thinking. Yes, you may be working toward the completion of a particular project. Yes, you may have a particular outcome in mind when you sit down to write. But the Pomodoro technique is a system. If you tell yourself that you will show up each day and complete 250 minutes (or whatever number you choose) of work, then you have committed to a particular set of behaviors — not to the achievement of a particular goal. Goals aren’t particularly helpful. At the beginning of every football season, every coach has the goal of winning a championship. But not every coach has a winning system. Many people set goals on December 31 for the new year. But almost nobody installs a system. The Pomodoro technique or any other process you might put into place provides a way to accomplish things, no matter what those things may be. It professionalizes a way of work. And while it’s not goal-oriented, goals have a prominent place. And you will find that somehow goals are achieved better when you do more than merely have them.
To anticipate a question, there is nothing magical about twenty-five minutes. You can experiment with the format all you like. You can completely overhaul it if you like. However, for me, this process has been a tangible and effective way to avoid procrastination, block out distractions, and move the ball down the field every single day that I do it.
How and Where We Work
I almost never work in my office. The office is mainly a place to meet a client for the first time or a week or so before court. It is also the place where I retrieve mail that will be scanned into our system. My actual office is in my briefcase. I sprawl the contents of this office on tables in various courtroom law libraries or coffee shops throughout the state. Today is a prime example. I finished up a case this morning that required a court appearance. With the court appearance complete, I went to the closest coffee shop, where I called opposing counsel on a case tomorrow. But the real fun was in the written work I completed today. I work with an associate. She doesn’t even come to the office and works almost entirely remotely. We meet in person every week or two. But today I received an edited version of an amended motion for new trial that she reviewed for me. And I worked on editing an amended for new trial she prepared. We both work in the Apple universe, each with MacBooks and the big iPad pros. It’s a process that works great and one I’ll explain more in future blog posts.
New Podcast from GACDL
The Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has a new podcast up. In episode 1, I interview criminal defense attorney and author Jason Sheffield about his new novel. But we get into some other topics such as attorney-client relationships, law practice management, and the good and bad of law school education in America. This was a fun interview. And I think you will enjoy it, too.
We have another episode recorded and in production
The podcast is available on iTunes and Soundcloud. Please go to iTunes and leave us a comment or a rating. And please reach out to me to suggest a guest for an upcoming show.
Storytelling: The Why and the How
One of my favorite bloggers on trial advocacy is Mark Bennett. Mark has written a series of great posts at Simple Justice, Scott Greenfield’s blog on the topic of opening statements.
Mark offers 11 rules for better opening statements. One tip is to limit your opening statement to fifteen minutes. From experience, this is a solid tip. The rest of his rules could be summarized in a single sentence. Your opening should tell a story. Stories are all the rage in trial advocacy these days. If you have been to a CLE on trials. You have heard about story and why openings should be more like a story and less like a lawyerly presentation. The reason is simple. Jurors and judges love stories. Stories are more persuasive than speeches. Stories draw is in.
I have become frustrated with all of this talk of story. I was convinced, years ago, that storytelling is important for opening statements, for briefs, and even for simple motions. But CLE programming is light on nuts and bolts instruction on how to tell a good story. And that was why I was excited to learn about Pixar’s online class on storytelling offered through Kahn Academy. The class is excellently done, with great videos (each one tells a story) and activities to work on to get better at story telling. The video series is not aimed at lawyers, but it is exactly the storytelling 101 I’ve been looking for. I cannot give a comprehensive recommendation here because I am at the beginning of the lesson.
And, in case you aren’t aware of Pixar— Pixar is the company that perfected computer animation in the 1990s with Toy Story and with other great films. I have long been a fan of their work. They have not just made some of the best animated films of the past century, but some of the best films, period. Their success lies not just in technological achievement — though they have done some remarkable stuff — but in the craft of storytelling. Here are some screenshots of the table of contents for the series.
If you have been told that you need to embrace storytelling but you aren’t sure what to do, I hope that this will be a good resource for you. And how cool is Kahn Academy? It has been a go-to place for my children to supplement their school instruction for quite some time. But I had no idea that there was such great stuff on there for adults.