The logic is that with a short duration of only 25 minutes, a learner can start more easily and get through the work efficiently. The hope is that students begin to think in pomodoros: how many rounds of 25+5 will a particular task take? For example, a student can begin to internalize that a list of homework questions will take two rounds, whereas an essay will take ten.

There are always individual preferences and differences. There will be some learners who thrive solo, and I’m all about cheering on when a student finds their recipe or repertoire for feel-good learning. 

Between the 73 tabs we might have open to the hypervigilant “what am I forgetting?” feeling, it can feel so hard to stick to the task–any task–these days.

Students are sometimes surprised when I mention food and water as part of learning strategy coaching sessions, but I’ve had too many 1:1s with students who describe sleeplessness yet have a Red Bull in hand, who speak about relentless underlying worry and who live off of coffee and candy. I’m not claiming causation, but I do notice correlation. 

What touches me most in these student sessions is the articulated confusion over what to do. In that, I hear open-heartedness, I hear (as always) a place for learning strategies to help, and I hear the friction and tension and push-and-pull that learners live in all the time. The “what should I be doing?” or “how can I decide?” The sense that amidst all of the demands, it’s very hard to know what to do.