Pomodoro is the Italian word for tomato, which was the source of inspiration of Francesca Pirillo in coming up with this productivity technique. It allows you to focus on one task and one task only at a time.

Take that multi-tasking, I don’t need you anymore!

So how does the Pomodoro Technique works?

First off, you will need a timer, Ms. Cirillo recommends getting the Pomodoro timer one. . Each Pomodoro represents a single task that you have to finish within 25 minutes.

It’s pretty strict. Once you start, you must suffer no interruptions. Otherwise, the Pomodoro is void! and you’ll have to start another Pomodoro.

There’s no such thing as a quarter or a half pomodoro. Each task that you list down should be completed within that amount of time. This means that if you have a big task that might require you working the whole day, you need to break down the big job into several bite-size tasks. This will allow you to complete one task in every 25 minutes.

The Pomodoro Technique also allows you to track your activities for the day. This way, you can really tell if you’ve been productive or not. We usually “feel” that the day has been productive but we’ve actually been sidetracked by Digital Distractionitis and you’ve forgotten to eliminate distractions by setting goals.

How can you apply this Pomodoro technique for yourself?

1. Go download the Pomodoro Technique ebook. It’s just about 45 pages long. You can breeze through it in one sitting. Plus there’s the cheat sheet if you want to learn it quickly.

2. Also, you will need the Pomodoro Technique resources such as the To Do List, the Activity Inventory and others.

3. Go get yourself an alarm clock, a timer, a Pomodoro timer or better yet, go download the FocusBooster app. An online timer you can install on your computer to help you be on the Pomodoro Technique. If you have trouble installing it, you gotta get the Adobe Air application first.

4. Commit to the Pomodoro Technique for at least a month to make sure you make it part of your system.

What techniques do you use to increase your productivity?

Here are some blogs dealing with the Pomodoro Technique:

The Pomodoro Technique for Time Management by Sitepoint Blogs.
Applying the Pomodoro Technique in Writing by Meryl
Using the Pomodoro Technique by WebWorker
The Pomodoro Technique Fights Deadline Anxiety with a Timer by Lifehacker.com
The Pomodoro Technique Day Six by Mark Hamilton

Some books on Productivity and Pomodoro Technique:

There is actually a website that offers college (and even graduate) students the chance to save money. Nope, it’s not Amazon or Barnes and Noble. It’s called Textbookrecycling.com. This is a great concept for college students who need to save as much money as they could.

Some college students start working on their free time just to get additional income for their use. I didn’t have to do that, thankfully because my parents supported my college education. But I’m sure that thousands of other students are working and trying to earn and save money as much as they could.

The best thing is, as soon as students finish using their textbooks in college, they can also sell textbooks online. It can also be a way to earn money after using a textbook and by recycling the textbooks, we can also help save the environment.

If you want to know more about Textbookrecycling.com, click here. Of you are a student with a number of textbooks sitting at your apartment unused, you can start selling your textbooks online by visiting Textbookrecycling.com. It’s a good way to help you go through college.

I’ve heard the terms “Facebookery” and “Twitteritis” from Yahoo Launchcast. I laughed. But it has a ring of truth in it. We really are in the age of digital distraction.

If you’re afflicted by the following symptoms, then you’ve got digital distractionitis.

1. Can’t plug out of the computer and the Internet without emotional anguish. You can’t imagine plugging out of the computer. If you do, it is with utmost regrets and a painful sigh.

By the way, here’s a really good graphical representation of digital distraction by David McCandless of Information is Beautiful.

2. Glued to Facebook for an hour or so. If you spend more than an hour straight in Facebook, you really have “Facebookery” and is seriously distracted.

3. Twittering, Plurking after every five minutes about the weather, the food you’re eating, when you’re going to the bathroom, or really personal matters you’re thinking about. Give yourself a break dude!

4. Signing up for Overtime at the office just so you can enjoy free internet. You got the overtime pay and you’ve checked your favorite sites, too!

5. You’ve got dark spots on your wrists. Too much typing and mouse-overuse.

6. The deadline for your project was yesterday and you’re just doing halfway through it. And Facebook, Plurk and Twitter are beckoning you to log on.

7. You’re with the friend at the coffeeshop (with free Wi-Fi) and you just can’t resist the urge to check your email on your phone. There goes the good conversationalist.

8. You’ve got Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari open. Each of them with numerous tabs open. On top of that, you’re chatting with at least five friends on Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Google Chat or Skype.

9. You’re checking your favorite YouTube videos, blogs and websites every hour to see if there are new posts and content for you to read or watch.

If you’re displaying all nine symptoms, you better give yourself a break and start working! Don’t wait for the boss to come around and catch you.

The other day, I managed to visit the FreestyleMind blog. I was introduced to the Pomodoro Technique, which can help minimize distraction and increase productivity. Will try it out in the next few weeks and give updates on my progress. That’s going to be the subject of the next blog post here at Penstalker.com

Here are some blogs dealing with digital distraction and some ways to help you out.

Digital Distractions: Malady, Madness or Nirvana?
Driven to Media Distraction
Social Media: a distraction or an assistant?
Attention and Distractions in a Social World
Social Media – Distraction or Smart Strategy?

These books deal with digital distraction and help increase productivity.

Welcome to the age of distraction. Thanks so much World Wide Web!

If you think about it, it boils down to the issue of control. Are you in control of your tools or are you controlled by them?

To achieve anything, athletes, organizations and even artists set goals. It’s easier to follow some kinds of goals than just linger around appearing to do something but in fact, nothing is being accomplished.

What are your top distractions?

I can list quite a few.

Facebook
Plurk
Twitter
My Google reader
Yahoo Messenger IM’s
Blog-hopping without purpose
Watching youtube videos
Fidgeting around trying to look for books to arrange or dirt to clean up
Tinkering with too many blogs
Too much reading
Chatter with the officemates during work hours
Playing online games
Checking Google Adsense for the twenty-fifth time in a day
Checking web analytics for the nth time in a day

What are yours? Feel free to add yours in the comments section.

To combat distractions, you should set goals. Here are four reasons why you need goals.

1. Goals help keep you on the right road.

Without a GPS device, you might get lost in a city you’re not familiar with. If you’re trying to achieve something you’ve not done before, then goals can serve as your GPS in an uncertain terrain. No GPS available? Fine. Go get yourself a good old fashioned map. Your grandfather probably survived with that. You can, too.

2. Goals eliminate distractions.

If you know what you want, and you want them badly, you can say goodbye to lots of useless distraction. Your novel is waiting to be written. Your first million is waiting to be won. The girl of your dreams is waiting to be wooed.

Whatever it is that you want, goals can help you say goodbye to Farmville or any other distracting online game so you can get what you want.

3. Goals achieved can give you a high.

It’s addicting, really. One goal leads to another and you can get caught up in completing them all. Although they say that they journey is its own reward, it doesn’t hurt to arrive at your destination a little richer or a little better.

4. The pursuit of your goals keep you occupied.

When you are pursuing your goals, you really don’t have much time to waste for trivial stuff. I’m not saying you shouldn’t spend time with your family or that all you should ever do is work. You should also set aside time for those. But with goals in your head and in your mind, you will have less time spent on things that do not really matter for you.

Why don’t you spend a week of your life thinking about what you want in life and how you could transform this into goals?

Go on, take a break and think about your future. How can you live a meaningful life? How can you achieve more in less time?

Giving in to distractions means that you are not really set with your vision and your goals. Reviewing them might just give you added momentum to get working.

These blogs offer a number of tips on how you can further eliminate distractions:

Tips on Multitasking by OneMint.
Ten Practical Tips to Save time
Top Five Ways to Improve Productivity from eduBook
Momentum by Redroom blog
Silencing and Eliminating Distractions by Stevenhorner

Check out these books on Goal-setting:

Walter Mosley writes in an average of 3 hours a day. He recommends the same level of devotion to people who really want to hone their craft and develop the skills they need to sustain them in their writing career. Mosley writes at least three hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year! That is a surefire way to establish one’s writing career!

Brad Thor, another novelist, advises the same thing. He is publishing one novel a year. For a best-selling author who has reached the top spot of the New York Times bestseller’s list with his seventh novel, that is certainly a remarkable feat! Writing indeed needs dedication, constant practice, patience and intense discipline.

In the Ilocano writing community, I could point to at least one person who writes regularly day after day after day! According to my good friend, Ariel Tabag, the award-winning writer Reynaldo A. Duque is a disciplined writer who wakes up in the morning and the first thing he does is write. No, I don’t know if he drinks his coffee first or goes to the bathroom upon waking up. But if his writing output were to be the criteria, I would say that this guy is for real! He is a Hall of Fame Awardee of the Don Carlos Palanca Literary Awards.

For us, ordinary folks, how could we even attain such remarkable feats of creativity?

1. Resolve to write daily!

It starts with the mind. If you and I decided one day to write daily and do everything in our power to explore the creative nook and cranny of our minds, then that is certainly a good start. Just like a good relationship, we don’t really know where such decision will lead us. But it’s a decision nonetheless.

image credit: www.officemuseum.com

2. Decide on the best time to write.

Making a decision is easy. But it is more difficult to follow through and deliver. To make sure you deliver, observe your moods and your output. What time of the day do you work best? In the morning before hitting the rigors of your full-time job or do you work best at night when everyone’s fast asleep and nobody’s there to disturb you?

If you decide to work in the morning, then that might mean getting up an hour earlier than you’re used to. Or if you decide to write at night, you will have to let go some social calls like after work sessions with drinking buddies or seeing late night movies with the lover. Hmm… I suggest working in the morning!

No matter what time you decide on, you better stick to it like sacred time! Otherwise, you won’t really get into the habit of writing daily.

3. Setup your workspace.

Your workspace could be a bare desk in the living room. Or it can be a notebook—not the electronic type with a keypad in it, but a good ol’ fashioned one complete with blue lines on the pages. If you can afford it, you can even rent a room to serve as your writing laboratory. But in a country as ours with economic realities impinging so much on our ideal state of life, it would be best to simply work on the home computer. Just make sure nobody disturbs you when you’re working there. You have enough room for your notes and some reference books and materials you’ll need.

4. Show up at your workspace on the appointed time and place.

Try doing this for at least 3 weeks. Before you know it, you will have gained this habit and will start producing the short stories, the poetry and perhaps even the novel that you have dreaming about. Even if you don’t know where to start, by simply sitting in front of your desk and staring into the blank computer screen for hours, you will eventually grow tired of that blank space and start banging away at your keyboard like an enraged musician.

5. Read, read, read.

To be a good reader, you should also be a good reader. You should learn the techniques and the tricks of the trade. How other writers express their stories. Which ideas are worth stealing and improvising on, and how you can develop your writer’s voice.

6. Write, write, write!

No matter how many hours you sit in front of the computer and stare at the screen, nothing will happen unless you start writing! That’s what really matters, the next word you put, the next sentence, the next paragraph, the next page, until you craft a complete story worth reading by other people, not because they are your family or friends, but because they are interested in the story you want to tell them.

7. Persevere.

Sure, you’ll hit some bumps along the way, but for every fall, make sure you stand up right away and concentrate on writing again. Nobody said it would be easy. Besides, look at the memoirs of most writers and they’d tell you that writing is a lonely pursuit.

Daunted? If so, you better quit now. If you’re up to the challenge, share additional tips on writing consistently by hitting the comments box! I wanna hear from you.

copywriting

Much of the writing going on in the World Wide Web falls under Copywriting. People are trying to aim for six figure copywriting. But how do you actually work your way towards six figure copywriting?

Writing is not an easy job. But for those who have chosen to hone their skills in this craft would find that as they continue writing, their expertise increases and they will eventually become experts at it.

The basic rule that people often follow in writing is summarized in the AIDA principle. You should generate AWARENESS first. Then increase INTEREST, Stoke the readers DESIRE, then pimp them for ACTION!

This is a straightforward principle. Yet, so many of us fail to implement it. In copywriting, the AIDA principle can really guide you in writing copy that could bring you the six figure income you’ve been dreaming of.

This process, however, takes time and lots of efforts. As they say, it is not for the faint-hearted. Nor is it for people who are looking for a quick way to riches!

Here are additional tips in working for six figure copywriting.

1. Slap the benefits in the face of readers!

Let them know that the product or service you are writing about could really solve their problems. What are these benefits? How would the reader, or target audience get what he or she wants by signing up for the product? Features are usually factual and a dry recounting of facts is boooring and would just drive your customers away. So instead of a bland presentation of facts and features, slap the benefits in the face of your readers.

2. Dangle the bait to them and talk about the limited offer.

It’s more than just saying (or writing, for that matter) about how limited this is. But you really gotta show them that there is a time and availability limit to the products you’re offering. If your product is scarce, people would realize they have to buy now or sign up now than later.

3. Use effective Font Type.

When Steve Jobs was building and designing Mac, he integrated a nice interface using great font typeface. Now, Apple’s Mac and the macbook, too, is the media artist’s dream computer. Follow Steve Jobs. Use great font types that could enhance the message you’re trying to get across to your audience.

4. Bother with the details!

A lot of people say don’t sweat the small stuff. It depends on what small stuff, we’re talking about. Six figure copywriting requires you to be specific. Really specific! Specify the monetary value of what they could get. Don’t settle for the big picture. Tell them how it could be if they follow your advice to the letter. To up the ante, you could even include numbers and statistics that could blow people away. Be careful though. Your stats and numbers should be truthful, lest you get shot in the head for lying.

5. Use effective Ads.

You can use ads in print, magazines and websites. If you have the chance, use the biggest ads you can. These can be spotted easily. But you should also have provision for the smaller size ads. As long as people know how to get to you and your product, and your copy, too!, you could be on your way to your six figure income.

image credit: www.zealousweb.net

The writing workshop of GUMIL Metro Manila, then, is a good preparation for the this upcoming contest. I really hope that this kind of Ilokano writing workshop would continue as we, young Ilokano writers, badly need it!

Speaking of contests, I recently won the first place of the Premio Reynaldo A. Duque! It was a big surprise for me! Yahoo!! It is my first ever writing award! I’m happy. Ecstatic. Exhilarated. And humbled, too! I know that I still have much to learn. But definitely, this award gives me a much-needed momentum and inspiration to write more short stories and poetry in Ilokano.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Premio Reynaldo A. Duque, it is sponsored by the Duque family in honor of Mr. Reynaldo A. Duque, one of the most awarded Ilokano and Tagalog writers still living. He is a 2003 Palanca Hall of Fame Awardee. He has served as the editor of Bannawag, the Ilokano magazine, and Liwayway, the Tagalog magazine in the 1990s. He is one of the stalwarts of Ilokano Literature.

Thanks to Premio Reynaldo A. Duque for giving a chance to beginners like me to pursue my visions and write in Ilokano. More power!

But the challenge is big! How to write a novel in 34 days?

1. Let the novel take shape in your mind. Don’t just start writing and pounding on the keyboard for your first 1,000 words. The key to successfully writing a novel in 34 days is planning. As the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” You certainly can’t build a make-believe world, a.k.a. a novel, in a day or in a month without a good, solid plan.

2. Start thinking about a character, an issue, a major conflict or a setting you want to explore in your novel. The Chronicles of Narnia started out with a single image in the mind of C. S. Lewis—that of a faun with scrolls in his hand and a shining lamppost nearby on a snowy day.

3. Decide the length of your project and the ideal number of chapters. This will help you understand how much work you need to do daily.

4. Divide the total number of words or the total number of pages of your novel by 34 days. That is the number of pages and the number of words you have to complete daily. You have to write 1,030 words (roughly 4 pages in a short bond paper) to complete a 35,000-word novel.

5. Outline your work.

6. Sketch the storyline of each chapter.

7. Grab a small notebook for your project.

8. Set a daily quota and work on it.

9. Mark the tasks you have to do on a desk calendar or any kind of calendar at all.

10. Explore the major characters of your story.

11. Get to know the minor characters of your story.

12. Describe the place where the majority of the scenes will take place.

13. Decide on the time period setting of your novel.

14. Write a brief synopsis and overview of your novel.
15. Grab a copy of a novel-writing manual and please, don’t let it be Writing a Novel for Dummies or The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Novel. Those books aren’t very helpful. If you’re near a library, go and borrow a good book on writing.

16. Get a copy of one of your favorite novels. You can treat this as a writing guide.

17. Set a time and place for working and stick to it!

18. Research!

19. Start writing!

20. Tell some of your trust family, friends and housemates about your plans to write a novel. This is called Accountability.

21. Ease into the habit of writing daily. And yes, that includes weekends!

22. Track your daily progress.

23. Celebrate small successes, like completing a chapter or passing through the 10,000th word!

24. Writer’s Block? Drink a cup of coffee, do several cartwheels or go for a walk. Anything to shake the lethargy off.

25. More Writer’s Bloc? See a friend. Rant. Talk. But after that, you gotta write!

26. Watch a good movie. Look at the treatment of character, setting and action.

27. Losing steam? Review your outline and your plan of writing.

28. Just write the first draft! Don’t revise or edit just yet. That will come in later.

29. Write furiously and write a lot!

30. Keep the faith! Stay Motivated. Take a break if needed.

31. Race to the finish line! Finish your novel on the 25th day to give time for editing.

32. Ask a friend (who’s into literature, preferably) to read your manuscript for helpful comments.

33. Edit. Revise as needed!

34. Put finishing touches and format the novel accordingly.

There you go! If you stick to your schedule and your creative vision, no excuse is going to make you stop! Even if your novel does not get published, the first reward is getting it written and building confidence within you. After writing at least 30,000 words, you’ll realize it isn’t really difficult at all!

So I’m taking the plunge and joining NaNoWriMo. But it’s gonna be in my native language—Ilokano. And I will cheat. How? Am gonna start now, right on this very day so I could have more time, albeit an extension of just a few days. Will you join me?

There are actually a number of Ilokano writing contests in the next few months. I’ll try to list them down, according to their deadlines.

Salip iti Ababa a Novela nga Iloko iti 1st Fele Javier Mann Literary Awards – deadline November 15, 2009
RFAAFIL Sarita a Fantasy – Enero 30, 2010
Cabie PINILI Sarita a Para Ubbing – Pebrero 28, 2010
Salip iti Sarita 2010 ti SABALI Awards

Numan pay saan pay a pormal a naluktan, adda pay dagiti sumaganad a pasalip iti sarita:
AMMAFLA (Para kadagiti Agdadamo a Mannurat) – Pebrero 28, 2010
PALANCA Awards – April 30, 2010
Sta. Rafaella Awards – Pebrero 28, 2010

There are a lot more! It’s just that I can’t remember all of them. As I learn about the other contests, I will update this post.

I’ve been thinking about the short novel contest, which is due on November 15. It’s not very long really. It should be composed of 5-7 chapters. Each chapter is about 10-15 pages, 8.5X11 inch bond paper, double space, Times New Roman point 12.

Writing a novel is definitely unlike writing a term paper or a nonfiction piece. You gotta have a big pot of ideas, a wild imagination that you could unleash anytime, lots of time! and most of all guts–guts to pursue topics that might be deemed crazy by a lot of people!

So yeah, writing a novel is definitely hard work.

Then, just yesterday, I discovered that November is the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! It’s a challenge for writers–newbies and professionals alike–to get their behinds down on a seat, pound on the computer and churn out 50,000 words in a matter of one month!

Whew!

This is very timely for the Ilokano contest for a short novel. I think that in a given month, if we could just produce at least 750 – 1,500 words daily, we could complete a short novel in a month’s time. Manong Jovy Amorin, one of the contemporary Ilokano novel writers in the Philippines, related to me once that some of his novels (42 chapters in all) were completed in less than 6 months! I’d say that is a good time-frame for a novel.

Perhaps, the organizers of the Salip iti Ababa a Novela nga Iloko iti 1st Fele Javier Mann Literary Awards could integrate the NaNoWriMo into the contest, we could promote the writing of novels among Ilokano writers and more writers would join this Contest. This might mean, though, that the deadline of the contest, which is November 15, 2009, might have to be pushed back to Nov 30, or December 1 to accommodate those who want to join the NaNoWriMo.

I have been a happy customer since the day you installed the service at our apartment along Quezon Avenue in front of BPI Biak-na-Bato. The rains came and went. The floods came and went. Your service went away on October 3, 2009 and somehow it didn’t find its way back. That’s right, more than two weeks after the havoc inflicted by Typhoon Ondoy, our telephone does not have a dialtone yet. Not even static. Nada. Kaput! The Internet? It’s busted! Sure the router’s working fine but there is not Internet connection!

We have called your customer service almost every other day asking when your service will be brought back to normal. All you can say is “sorry we apologize.” “Repairs are ongoing.” “We will expedite this matter.”

Sure, we accept your apologies. Sure we understand that Ondoy is an out-of-the-ordinary typhoon. But I seem to remember that I am in Quezon City and that the Bayantel Center in Roosevelt Avenue is just less than three kilometers away. Why can’t you give us a concrete time-frame when our phone line and DSL will be fixed?

Here are my grievances:

1. You are a communication company. Do you have a map and the schedule of the areas and places where service is to be restored? Do your service contractors communicate their repair routes to you?
2. If you do have such a map and such a schedule, do you share it with your customer service representatives?
3. Subcontracting the repair work to third party service agents is fine as long as they can deliver the agreed service level to your customers. But somehow, we are kept in the dark how long the repairs in our area take.
4. Yes, I understand, there will be rebates for the days your service was out. But there are things waiting to be downloaded and uploaded to the Web. A two-week (close to 3 weeks now, actually) service outage is unthinkable in this time, age and place! This is Quezon City and not some small-time city in the province.

The most important question of all…. When, oh when will the landline and Internet connection be restored?!

Other folks with problem with internet and landline from the Bayan Forum. More here

To the readers of this blog, sorry for this rant. It’s just that I haven’t been able to reestablish full net/web operations since Typhoon Ondoy. Thankfully, I have Sun Wireless Broadband as backup.