Playing music during breaks
Motivate yourself to start next pomodoro
One question frequently asked in r/pomodoro is "How do you motivate yourself to start next pomodoro after a break?" In this article I'll share my method, which is somewhat unorthodox, but may work for you. To my knowledge it’s the first time this approach has been described publicly.
I do pomodoro “by the book”, so let’s begin with some basic theory, and check what the Technique says about starting next pomodoro after a break. Without mentioning it explicitly, it essentially relies on the power of habit, which one develops due to the timer always going off after a set interval, e.g. five minutes. This implies that either
your "inner timer" is reasonably accurate, or
you monitor your timer app during the break (which kinda defeats break’s purpose, if you think about it).
Otherwise, the end of rest comes as a surprise, prompting you to start negotiating the next pomodoro with your lazy procrastinating inner self, while you should’ve already started it.
I thought there must be a better solution, something which would help me mentally prepare for the next pomodoro before the rest ends. Since our brains run on associations, I thought it would make sense to play with some visual or audible stimuli.
My first thought was — I might use my Philips Hue to indicate the state of the rest via light color. For example, glowing red at the start of the rest, and transitioning to green by the end of it. However, I soon abandoned this idea, as it wouldn't work well in the daylight. The sun goes down as I’m typing it, making me reconsider what I’ve just wrote.
Then I tried some countdown voice notifications, but sudden speech sounded outright creepy. Maybe it’s just me, but those things remind me of AI assistants like Alexa, which I hate with passion don’t trust all that much.
Finally, I played an MP3 during the rest — and that’s when the penny dropped.
You see, I personally don't listen to music while working. I simply cannot concentrate on the task at hand when something plays in the background. So for me, if the music starts playing, it's an instant interruption. And so I decided to use it for that exact purpose — to interrupt my work and start resting.
The core idea here is to associate a certain song with rest, so that you relax only while it plays.
So now, when I stick to one single melody, it becomes synonymous with rest, and it facilitates making a decision to start new pomodoro. See — I don't have to rely on my "inner timer" anymore, as the song "tells" me where I am in my resting period. As the song culminates, my brain gets ready for the next pomodoro "automatically", all by itself. This may sound too good to be true, but I can assure you that it works, quite well in fact!
Another obvious benefit of playing music while resting is that I don't have to check my timer anymore. It is hands-free pomodoro goodness. I can walk around the room, do some exercise or drink a glass of water — all while staying in a mental frame of my work-rest cycle.
Time for a shameless plug. When I find a smart productivity trick, which works well for me — I implement it in Flowkeeper. So, starting with version 0.8.0, Flowkeeper plays resting music by default. Of course, you can configure it to your taste, or turn it off altogether. Go check it out, it is Free software.
As nice as this feature sounds (sic!) you don’t really need an app to use it, just keep your mp3 player handy. Or you can go full retro and find a valid use case for your old cassette player! Just record your song in the loop, so that you don’t need to rewind the tape every time.
Now let us talk music. It is important, because you’re going to hear it ten times a day, every day. Although I’m an avid fan of Slaughter to Prevail, I suspected that not all Flowkeeper users would share my musical taste. Therefore I got in touch with a German musician Lobo Loco, who kindly allowed me to package his composition "Madelene" instead.
Madelene is a cool and neutral piano piece, and in my opinion it fits to purpose rather well. It has a hint of improvisation, which makes it kinda imperfect, but in a good “not boring” sense. Crucially, it happens to be almost exactly five minutes long. I used it myself for about a year, and didn’t hate it after thousands of replays. You can imagine how happy I was when Lobo granted me his permission to embed it in Flowkeeper. It should be noted that Lobo releases his music under CC-BY-NC-ND, which means it is Proper Free Stuff, i.e. respect.
Finally, I'd like to mention one technical bit for app developers, who may decide to implement a similar feature. It’s important for me to be able to select audio output device and its volume to allow the music play out loud even when I have my headphones connected. Flowkeeper supports it, and so should your pomodoro app.
That’s all, I hope someone will find it useful. If you tried this method, or if you're aware of another pomodoro timer which plays music during the resting period — please chime in the comments, I'd love to learn about it.