Creative flow needs ADHD-proof tools to hold me together and do all the stuff that doesn't come naturally to my brain.
There are a zillion pomodoro timers, but most just keep time. I need it to look after my time-blindness, memory glitches, balancing hyperfocus binges with project commitments, as well as the neurotypical basics of time and task tracking.
All the little ADHD things, like memory glitches, hyperfocus rabbitholes, time-blindness, object impermanence and delivery paralysis, are such big things. Beyond big. For neurodivergent folk, the typical pomodoro cycle of taking a break after every 25 minutes work often doesn't work. Every 5 minute break isn't a creativity-enhancing boost like I've heard others talk about... it's a task-abandonment cliff I fall off with no way of finding my way back. Some people just double it to 50-10, and for others it's not so simple.
I absolutely love my work and my research. But I have a glitchy brain and a glitchy body that both compete with my todo list for my attention. And in a smackdown between the PhD todo list, the ADHD brain, and the EDS body... the todo list is wildly outmatched every time. I use paper and tech, a little bit of Agile and a little bit of impromptu body-doubling (with research friends, my team, students and strangers 50 minutes at a time on Focusmate).
Nearly every neurodivergent person I know who has tried the pomodoro technique has tweaked it to leverage their own personal sweet spot.
- Extreme Hyperfocusers do anywhere between 45-120 minutes of deep work between breaks;
- Folks who seems to be Allergic to Gravity (POTS, PEM, EDS, CSF leak) often turn the pomodoro inside-out and try something like reverse HIIT training (aka "exercise snacking"), 3-12 minutes work with 25-120 minute recovery breaks (horizontal with an ice pack);
- Higher Impulsiveness & Distractibility lends itself to more of a HIIT circuit approach, using a colourful interval timer and personal trainer style, rapid-fire homework questions, 30 seconds of push-ups, then swapping to the next textbook on every 2-minute buzzer.
- And then there are the Switch-Hitters who are all of the above sometimes, and can't predict which kind of day it's going to be until they get there.
I type fast. But in the time it takes to click alt+tab or ctl+T I've already forgotten what I wanted to look up.
I remember pretty much every phone number and birthday I knew in 1987. But if my tasks are in an app or window that is not immediately visible, they completely cease to exist in my reality. I don't even have that niggling feeling that I've forgotten something. Just blissful obliviousness. They don't exist now, and they never did.
- Hold my
pursetask list for me. - Remind me what I'm meant to be doing in any moment.
- Keep my time and tasks together. In. My. Workspace. With. Me.
- Be there when I need a reminder, but not so in my face that it sparks pressure, self-bullying or shame spiral naps.
- Keep track in the moment, tell me when to start and stop.
- Let me update how long my work sessions and breaks are in real life. And adapt as needed.
- (Ideally) Tell me when I'm in the zone so I can schedule my most important work during my peak hours of awesomeness. And show me how the awesome hours flux and shift (no cycle remains consistent for more than a couple of weeks, so track realtime and show me daily and weekly trends).
- Do all this automatically without depending on my memory, willpower, or cognitive capacity in anyway whatsoever.
So, in VSCode that means the vscode-pomodoro extenion (includes the current task in the corner, just like Obsidian::DayPlanner -- not the beautiful rainbow dayplan, just the task and countdown timer in the status bar at the bottom of the page. And with my powermode fireworks, that tiny reminder in the corner is just right.)
The one that tells when when I'm in the zone is CodeTime and MusicTime. I'll walk through them next.