How Effective is the Pomodoro Technique?

Hello and welcome to the Psychology in the Classroom podcast. I am your host, Lucinda Paul. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Psychology in the Classroom, and I hope you are having a lovely half-term. Over the past couple of months, I have been focusing on exams and revision, and as it's still going on in our house,

Gosh, it does go on for a long time, doesn't it? I thought I would look at another study skill that links back to so many concepts that we've already addressed, such as metacognition, working memory and task switching. So today we are looking at the best way to break up revision. One of the things that revision requires is a good understanding by each student of what works well for them. We've already considered illusion of fluency, knowing when you have learned something.

But in the study skills courses that I run, I talk to students about concentrations. One of the tasks they have to do over a week is to try different lengths of time studying and breaks. I give them different techniques to try and we talk about how to break down an hour, so say 20 minutes recall, 20 minutes revision, 20 minutes practice questions as an example. Or maybe they prefer twenty five minutes with a five minute break.

The key thing is to work out what works for them, but there is little research in this area. Last year, however, Biwert and I really apologise if I've said that incorrectly, and colleagues did some research to compare different types of breaks during independent study. As always you can find the link to the paper in the show notes if you want to read the abstract or access the full article. I'm afraid it is behind a paywall.

So let's first of all understand a little bit about the role of breaks in revision or independent study. Learning requires effort. Students can only sit and learn for a limited amount of time before their working memory needs a break. Understanding how and when to take breaks may help students to learn more efficiently and effectively.

Let's just reflect on revision or independent study as a task. To sit and do any type of work that requires full mental capacity, part of the load is taken up with resisting distractions. So as I was putting together the script for this podcast, I also had to stop myself from looking out into the garden or worrying about the chores I need to do out there, or to stop myself from checking how many downloads that this podcast has received this week.

There are benefits to focusing on getting this podcast done. I will feel a sense of achievement, I enjoy making the podcast, I won't feel a sense of disappointment or stress if I miss getting it finished in time. However, there are also costs. My garden is a mess and I'm opening it up to charity in a week or so, so I'm feeling quite stressed about that. Not getting some weeding done now whilst the sun is shining, it means I have to do it later.

But I am an adult and I have had lots of practice in prioritising tasks, knowing the benefits of getting something done and being able to shut out distractions. I can cope with short term pain for long term gain. However, young people we know struggle much more with being able to shut out immediate rewarding distractions, so for example,

Fair Fahun. Especially when the benefits of study are usually distant in time. So when you ask a student to study with a phone on the desk, it requires effort to resist the temptation to pick it up, reducing the mental capacity available to study and learn. To give you some idea of the scale of the issue, research cited by the authors suggests that during a three hour study period, students were distracted thirty five times and spent twenty five minutes on

off task to use Teach to Speak. And I have already talked about cognitive switching. Again, research suggests that we switch tasks every 12 minutes and it can take a long time for us to get back on task. Obviously, as in other podcasts I have done, my strong advice to students who are working independently is to get rid of your phone. But let's face it, revision is generally boring and not something students are really keen and eager to do. So distractions can come in all shapes and sizes.

Hunger, comfort breaks, needing to find equipment, pets, music, family. My kids would rather take the dogs out than revive. So let's just break this down a little bit more. You will notice that some of these breaks are self-interrupted, going to make a cup of tea or getting up to give the dog a cuddle. Others might be external such as the doorbell ringing or a parent coming in. Interestingly, when the latter occur, it's much easier to get back to the original task.

And the task is completed faster than with the former. It is therefore suggested by the authors that self-initiated task switching might impair student self-regulation of effort and decrease their performance. Equally, externally initiated task switching might mean that they are quicker to get back to their task and they complete their task faster.

Let's then consider cognitive load. There is of course the primary cognitive load, the stuff that students are trying to learn, but then there is the secondary cognitive load. If breaks are decided by the student in the moment, this is secondary cognitive load. It will include self-monitoring, am I working efficiently, and self-regulation, do I need to take a break now or can I manage to focus for another 10 minutes?

This in theory at least would mean that the learning is disrupted, at least slightly when a student decides to take a break when they feel like My reflection at this point as well is that in this paper the researchers are considering university students who have had more practice and whose brain development and ability to self-regulate is better than younger students who are at school.

If you want to know more about the teenage brain development you can of course find several podcasts on this on my website. The authors therefore argue that using system regulated rather than self regulated breaks might lower the cognitive load. System regulated breaks are any break that follows a system such as the one I suggested earlier of splitting an hour into three sets of twenty minutes.

A very popular technique that you've probably heard of is the Pomodoro technique, so called because of the kitchen timers that are shaped like tomatoes. And the Italian word for tomato is Pomodoro. It was invented, and I use that word loosely, by Francesco Cirello. In the late 1980s, he used the Pomodoro timer when he was a university student to break his study time down into 25 minute chunks with five minute breaks, and then after four Pomodoros taking a longer break.

The point here is that the cognitive load of self monitoring and regulation are removed and effectively done by the timer, and the student can invest greater mental effort in the learning. In addition, as we have noted, because these breaks are externally initiated, the student might be able to get the task done faster as they're able to switch back to the original learning task file.

The researchers wanted to see the effect of systematic breaks on four things. First of all the task experience, they felt this would be more positive compared to self-regulated breaks, better concentration, interest, motivation to continue and so on. The second is mental effort. There would be greater mental effort invested in the task compared to self-regulated breaks.

The third is task completion rate would be greater, so they do more tasks. And finally they explore the experiences of the students during the break.

Let's just really quickly look at what the researchers did. The final sample of participants was 87 university students in the Netherlands, mean age of about 21.4 years old. Split into three groups for comparison. Group one was a self-regulated group and took breaks whenever they wanted. Group two used long systematic study blocks, so 24 minutes work and six minutes break, and then there was the short systematic blocks of 12 minute study and three minutes break.

The study used an online learning environment to monitor study times and students were asked a variety of questions at various points to measure task experience, mental effort, task completion, break activity, and experiences of break and defense. So what did they find? Here's a quick summary.

Across all groups, students intended to study for much longer than they actually did. In terms of blocks and breaks, the self-regulated group had significantly longer study blocks and took fewer breaks, with 8% taking four breaks. 34% taking one break and 29% taking two or three breaks. In a hundred and twenty-minute block of learning, this is compared to four breaks in the systematic long group and eight breaks in the systematic short group. But what about their experience?

While the self regulated group were more fatigued, more distracted, found concentration harder, and were less motivated to start studying again compared to both the other groups. This partially supports the idea that secondary cognitive load is reduced when students don't have to self monitor and regulate breakfast.

Though due to the nature of the study, the relationships between the different aspects are quite complex and difficult to disentangle to fully conclude that it is to do with secondary cognitive load. In terms of mental efforts there were fewer differences, but the systematic groups felt more concentrated and the self regulated groups had higher perceived difficulty of the learning.

The only difference between the short and long systematic study groups was that those in the short group, 12 minute study, 3 minutes break, was that they had more interest in studying just before the break. In addition, the opportunity costs were perceived as lower in both the systematic conditions. The qualitative data suggests that this might be because it helps postpone distractions to the break, enabling greater concentration and motivation to start studying.

There were no differences in task completion, though the tasks were very varied from watch a lecture to write discussion for the thesis. There is some indication that similar tasks across conditions were completed more efficiently in the systematic conditions, but this is only tenuous. There were no differences in terms of satisfaction, enjoyment, or feeling of control during the study period.

What did students do during their break then? Mostly what you would expect have a drink of water, go to the loo, check social media, check and send personal messages. Occasionally people will go outside or do some physical exercise. Finally, the students' experience of different brake systems were mixed. Remember of course that they knew their study time was being monitored and so just this might change their normal behaviour, what in psychology we call demand characteristics.

If nothing else it made students reflect on the length of their study periods, their breaks and what they were doing in their non study time. In summary, systematic study breaks do seem to lead to less fatigue and distraction, greater efficiency, motivation and concentration, and learning tasks are perceived as easier.

Whilst it is suggested that this is due to reduced secondary cognitive load, this cannot definitively be concluded from this particular study due to the methodological limitations. Let's just quickly evaluate this study. It was a field study done during COVID in a natural independent learning environment, but some participants did feel watch, and with a clock ticking down they may well have been more aware than usual of how much time they were studying and taking a break.

In addition, the tasks that students were performing may not match those which we would expect a GCSE or A-level student to be doing, so there's a problem of generalisability for us as teachers. For example, it is relatively easy to break down revision into four 15-minute chunks, where writing a dissertation discussion might actually benefit from a longer period of sustained work, especially if the student achieves what is known as a flow stage. And taking a break might actually come at a cost.

How then might we apply this to the classroom or to students' revision in school? What advice should we give students? This is where mocks, school, exams and dare I say it, homework play an essential role in teaching students how to revise and learn. Essentially, it is metacognition. Students need to learn how to manage their study, what works for them, and how they need to approach different tasks, essay writing versus learning definitions.

So for example, I have had actually no problem in sitting down for three hours to do this podcast. I have been in a state of flow, engrossed in what I'm doing, with the distraction of the garden fading into the background.

However, if I had been asked to mock a pile of essays, I would have needed to take breaks. I would have found it challenging, I wouldn't feel particularly inspired, and I'd really have to concentrate. Equally, students need to know what tasks can be done in large chunks and what needs to be broken down into smaller chunks. I would suggest that we encourage them to try different techniques for managing their revision time across different subjects.

Whilst this research is not wholly conclusive, it does suggest that breaking revision down using a timer, system-regulated breaks, especially if students aren't very motivated or find the task difficult will improve their study experience. As I have said, there are lots of podcasts available under the cognition and learning section of my website, www.changingstates of mind.com forward slash podcast.

that I have referred to and might support some of the ideas that we have talked about. So please do go and check them out and feel free to share them and this one obviously if you found it useful. So if you are marking exams this half term, good luck. Have a very, very restful rest of your week. And I will see you next week when I'll be talking to the Restar team to catch up on their progress. So until then, goodbye.

Thanks so much for listening. I've been your host, Lucien DePole. Don't forget to like, subscribe, bookmark, or review this podcast via whichever app you listen to your podcasts on. You can get in touch with me via social media or my website www.changingstatesofmind.

com to let me know what you would like to learn more about. My thanks as always to the British Psychological Society's Division of Academics, Researchers and Teachers for the continued support of the Psychology in the Classroom podcast. So until next time, good.