Writing and developing ideas can be an exhausting business. Content demands ingenuity and novel approaches. Productivity is at a premium.

Problems can occur in three ways. You may be ‘blocked’ and simply cannot think of anything to do. You may be producing poor quality work, and aware of it. You may be too distracted to be able to work.

In all cases there can be often a good reason for this: the mind has a limited capacity for concentration and is better suited to short bursts of activity rather than hours and hours slogging away at something.

There are many ways to become more productive. One way is to chop your time up into bits with defined breaks in-between to let your brain recharge. This has evolved into a system: The Pomodoro Technique.

Developed by Italian software and management consultant Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s, The Pomodoro Technique actively encourages breaks to divide-up your work into smaller chunks where you can keep your concentration high. This way you will achieve more.

The idea is refeshingly lo-fi. You need paper, a pen and a timer before you start, so you can try it now. Particularly if you are stuck:

1. Set your tasks. Use the pen and paper to write a to-do list. Make the tasks achievable. If what you are doing is complex, then break it up into smaller pieces.
2. Set a timer to a fixed length of time, usually 25 minutes. The length of time is the ‘Pomodoro’. Cirillo used a standard tomato-shaped kitchen timer when he developed the technique and Pomodoro is Italian for tomato. Hence the Pomodoro Technique.
3. Each of these 25-minute spells is for you to work. Work until the bell rings, and then stop.
4. Very importantly, take a very short break. Say 5 minutes. Enough to: make a cup of tea; take a quick walk around; perform a small but mundane chore; give yourself a quick massage. Something like this.
5. Begin another Pomodoro, but after four rounds you should then take a longer break of 15 minutes to half an hour.

The difficulty is in keeping to the 25-minute spell, particularly if you seem to be making good progress. Still stick to it, and don’t feel you have to rush and finish a task in the 25-minute window.  You don’t.

Try it. You can vary the length of the Pomodoro to suit you. It might be you flag after 20 minutes, or a bit longer at half an hour.  The process can be adapted to you and how you work most efficiently.

Cirillo has a website full of ideas and what he’s been up to since he developed the Pomodoro Technique (a lot). You can also buy apps to automate the process.