How to Introduce the Pomodoro Technique to Children

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The Pomodoro technique is a simple, yet efficient study method, developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. This method consists of alternations between 25-minutes of work with five or ten-minute breaks.   First, we turn off all distractions (phones, blocking sites on computers, etc). Then we set a timer for about 25 minutes. Cirillo used this method with a tomato-shaped kitchen timer (Pomodoro means “tomato” in Italian). Next, we focus as intently as possible for those 25 minutes. Naturally, our mind will wander, but we will gently …

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How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 2)

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Articles in this series: The Limitations of the Deep Work Hypothesis – Introduction How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 1) How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 2) This article will present other techniques that women (who usually experience gender stereotyping or/and are caregivers) choose to follow in their work aspirations. As in the previous article, most of this research is based on Mason Currey’s excellent books, Daily Rituals and Daily Rituals: Women at Work.   Hidden in plain sight   Costume designer Edith Head created the …

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How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 1)

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Articles in this series: The Limitations of the Deep Work Hypothesis – Introduction How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 1) How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 2) As I mentioned in the previous article, the focus of this article is adding more examples of women (who usually either experience gender stereotyping or are caregivers or both) to the deep work philosophies Cal Newport identified in his book Deep Work. To recap some work strategies, Newport categorized four types of work philosophies …

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The Limitations of the Deep Work Hypothesis – Introduction

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Articles in this series: The Limitations of the Deep Work Hypothesis – Introduction How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 1) How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 2) In his Deep Work bestseller, Cal Newport coins the term “deep work” as “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”   In contrast, Newport defines shallow work as “non-cognitively demanding, …

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Remembering 2021

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So much has happened in 2021, so little has occurred.  Coups d’état, lockdowns, controversies, wars, destructive climate disasters, 2021 was a terrible year. There is no denying there were some sparks of hope. For example, we saw the massive collaboration effort that contributed to the delivery of almost nine billion Covid jabs. This endeavour was not without troubles along the way, such as uneven access to vaccines or variants that seem to evade the vaccine. 2021 also brought the world’s first 3d printed school, built in …

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Writing Insights (2021)

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A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, “Do you think I could be a writer?” “Well,” the writer said, “I don’t know…. Do you like sentences?”  Annie Dillard – The Writing Life As I started writing articles for this blog for over a year now, I thought to review the lessons I learned about writing during this journey.  When to Write  What started as stealing time to write, here and there, progressed into a much more organized framework. Most of my …

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Wise Ideas from Morgan Housel’s Book The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness

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One of the better books about financial education that I have read is Morgan Housel’s book, The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness. This book started as a blog post that can be read here. Some sharp insights in this book struck me, and I will discuss them in more detail in the following paragraphs.  Investing is not the study of finance but how people behave with money The premise of this book is that doing well with money has little to …

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End of the Year Favourites (2021)

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Some of the articles I most enjoy reading are the recommendation articles from the people I follow. So I thought to share my better discoveries of 2021. This article is not sponsored, and there are no affiliate links as I only want to recommend things that I found valuable over this year.  Books  There were quite a few books I marked with four or five stars on my Goodreads profile, but I want to talk in particular about three of them as they made …

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