You've heard the expression "working my fingers to the bone". When I'm working with clients on book projects, I sure do feel like that adage in action. Right now, I'm coaching a team of authors through a major revision of their first book on a production schedule. Meaning lots of hours logged at the computer.
This is a problem for someone like me with repetitive stress injury. Looking at about loads of hours of keyboard work for this project, I decided to try a new technique to reduce my chances of tweaking my arms and getting sidelined. In addition to scheduling weekly sessions with my awesome physical therapist, Vinny Marra, I adopted a new work flow, using the Pomodoro Technique.
Pomodoro means tomato in Italian, but in this case, it's a management technique created by Francesco Cirillo (he used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer) and adopted by a lot of software developers I know, who also log hours keying. We use it to force ourselves into frequent breaks that enable us to avoid overuse injury.
Here's how I'm doing it:
- Set my timer (I've been using my phone) for 25 minutes
- Work till the timer goes off, finishing the sentence or paragraph I'm working on
- Save my work
- Set my timer for 5 minutes
- Walk around and do some shoulder, arm and hand stretches to loosen up and get the blood flowing
- Drink a glass of water
- Repeat
After 8 pomodori I have tomato sauce. After 4 hours of work, I snuggle up with my Bucky body wrap for about 15 minutes to rest and reset before going on to another project.
The technique's working. I'm not paralyzed or in pain after a long session on the keys and I'm super-focused on the task at hand (har har). I'm about half-way into the project and I think I'm going to survive!
Why don't you give this method a try next time you're facing a big production project?