Building on the ideas behind Tiny Prep, I’ve begun to experiment with the Pomodoro Technique and developing an approach which seeks to complete one Pomodoro of effort daily for my GM game prep.

The basic method is simple: set a timer for 25 minutes and focus on one task. When the timer rings, you take a 5 minute break. This is one “Pomodoro” (the name comes from the author’s original timer being shaped like a tomato – which in Italian is a “pomodoro”). Every four Pomodoros, take a 30 minute break.

What’s great for prep is that it time-bounds the process of working on your prep to just 25 minutes. Having developed the basic Tiny Prep habit, I have found myself better able to sustain some prep and one Pomodoro is generally a nice chunk of time… but not too much for the evenings after work.

The basic technique is, however, only the beginning. Francesco Cirillo’s book develops the process to include some simple but useful planning and review tools. The most useful part has been the creation of a Prep Task Inventory list – which is just a list of the things you want to prep – to help manage the workflow.

What I like is the advice on managing distractions, the worst of which are the internal ones where something pops into your mind. For this, you quickly make a note of the thing that occurred to you on the current task list.

If a distraction is prep related, you can later transfer it to the Prep Inventory. If it’s something else, well, you transfer that to whatever list you keep for other stuff. You can deal with distractions during another Pomodoro or, if it’s a quick thing, during a break.

The impact for me has been to greatly improve my focus during periods of writing and design for my games. As new ideas pop up, I can simply make a note and then get back to the task at hand. This leads to greater depth of work in the moment but allows me to capture the other ideas as they arrive.

Overall, I find Pomodoro Prep to be a useful extension to my Tiny Prep habit. If there’s a day when I really can’t spare the energy to do a 25-minute Pomodoro of effort, well, it’s ok to simply roll the Tiny Prep die after all.

Game on!