You Say Tomato: Check Out This Delish Productivity Trick 🍅
A travel edition with a little something for everyone.
3 min read
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FILE UNDER SELF-CARE
Greetings from summer vacation! I’m taking some time away, but I didn’t want to leave you high and dry so here’s an express edition with a quick round-up of what I’m digging in while I’m exploring new time zones. ✈️ 🇮🇹 🇲🇹
Audiobook: The Comfort Crisis, by Michael Easter. I prefer to read my fiction with an old-fashioned hardcover, but nonfiction and memoirs always resonate more with me when read by the author. (But don’t get me started on Barbra’s 48-hour sprawl, oy!) I’m finding award-winning journalist Easter’s seminal work to be a valuable tool in examining how we can reclaim our physical and mental well-being by pushing the edges of our comfort zone, which I think we can all agree has gotten a bit…soft.
Fiction: Good Material, by Dolly Alderton. A woman writing from the POV of a 35-year old male standup comedian. I want to shout from the rooftops how much I loved this book. I laughed, I cried, she named her LLC for a reference from When Harry Met Sally and I will carry that forever in my heart.
Documentary: Inspiration by the Mile, a four-part YouTube series produced in part by LeBron James about a group of friends running the Boston Marathon to raise awareness around Black men’s mental health after losing their friend and fearless competitor to suicide.
Mantra: “Maybe you were just getting all the hard days out of the way so you could live the rest of your life in peace.” Cory Allen 🫶🏻
Essential Long-Haul Travel Support: No Jet Lag. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again—and they’re not even paying me to say it. This stuff works.
HERE’S A TIP, MAKE THE CHANGE
You say tomato, here in Italy we say pomodoro, and we all say we need some extra help with productivity, especially when it comes to self-imposed deadlines or keeping a routine when our routine is interrupted. The Pomodoro Technique is a simple and effective time management method in which you do focused work during 25-minute intervals — known as pomodoros, (named for the kitchen timer used by its creator Francesco Cirillo) — then take a five-minute break, then after 4 pomodoros, a longer break of 20-30 minutes before starting again. You can plan your day into sections by deciding how many pomodoros you want to take down. The benefit is that it breaks big tasks into digestible chunks of time, and can help motivation just in knowing that your work sesh has a built-in stop just a few short minutes away. Great for procrastinators and productivity nerds alike, and even those with FODMAP sensitivities can handle this tomato, hey-o! 🍅
It’s the weekend, take a few pomodoros and then let’s call the whole thing off.