How a student changed her study habits by setting goals and managing time | Yana Savitsky | TEDxLFHS

[Music] [Applause] when I first told my friends that I was doing a talk on a sunny method that I used I could see the collective look of disgust that slept across their faces as they process what I just told them so bear with me as I firmly believe that the Pomodoro method has the power to change your life my typical cycle of studying used to start out determined I would come home sit down at my desk and do a couple of worksheets the only problem was that productiveness only lasted for an hour as I would

easily get distracted I would usually spend a couple hours of my phone and then I would snap back into determination but find myself getting burned out once again as the minutes ticked away I would work until I physically couldn't anymore I pass out utterly exhausted when my rigorous course choice this year I had made myself promise that I would be productive I had to I had to succeed and yet I I failed to do that every single day I struggled to stay afloat fatigued stressed and strained and I snapped as a result and quite truthfully

I was disappointed disappointed with myself then one day I came across a video it was a video telling me how to study better and I was intrigued by one specific tip the Pomodoro method so what is it exactly well you start out by deciding on a task and estimating the amount of time that it will take you take for instance this AP world chapter outline I estimate that it will take me four hours of work give or take when instead of thinking about the outline as four hours of work I'm going to think about it

in terms of 25 minute increments or Pomodoro's so this outline would in theory take me eight Pomodoro's the next step is to work for those 25 minutes with absolutely no distractions or you after restarting the Pomodoro but after that hyper-focused work you get to reward yourself with a five-minute break we're sure to recharge and refresh you in preparation for the next full Medoro four cycles of this pattern of twenty five five minutes and then you get to take a long break fifteen to thirty minutes for myself I typically still try to stay off my phone

during these breaks and make some coffee take short walk or and I want to feel super productive I'll do chores I know shocker this method was actually developed in the 90s by Francisco cirillo who named the system Pomodoro which means tomato in Italian after this 25-minute kitchen timer that he used to track his work and it is important to know that although he developed the system for a twenty five five-minute pattern the Pomodoro is a fluid system it's designed to help you and help you with your work for myself I stick to the traditional twenty

five five-minute pattern when I'm doing worksheets or studying for tests but for longer more time-consuming assignments like let's say projects or essays I choose to work for much longer increments that take shorter breaks so here I am now I'm still not the perfect student and I want to iterate that but the Pomodoro has changed me it changed the way I think and act about my work when needed I could spend a full day simply working as I am just recharged had kept stimulated through the whole day with a timer constantly ticking I find myself working

quickly in order to achieve and accomplish those goals through each 25-minute increment and quite truthfully it just feels so much more rewarding and fulfilling being able to check things off after the other washing your pile of work go down knowing that you accomplished something that day instead of not to call you out but wasting two hours on Netflix so now it's my turn to ask you are you as efficient as you can me are you productive or does your time seem to just slip away do you complete your work or is it scrape together at

the last minute the Pomodoro is a fluid system designed to help you produce higher quality work in a shorter amount of time but whatever a method I encourage you to think about your time differently just some goals for yourself and strive to meet them to set aside the constant distractions and focus on your tasks at hand you never know how much time you really have until you start to use it and it looks like my break is over thank you [Applause]