No one likes procrastination, or at least the idea of it.

So I decided, for this summer, to let it go. To take premeditated walks instead of watching random youtube videos. To break my work time into 20 minute chunks, to match the human attention span. It sounded like the productive, utopian dream of any hardworking student. Everything seemed fine at first. But after a few weeks my mind began to resist me, resenting my efforts to focus it, and I garnered increasing stress, and misery. Not one to give up, I supposed: my mind was just naturally trying to preserve itself against the onslaught. I therefore introduced lengthier walks, and took longer showers, to allow my mind to recuperate.

And everything seemed fine again. I was able to complete my schedules without my brain hurting, without unhealthy stress. But there is one more issue that remains, that I am coming to grips with: Everything was mechanical: the timers, the premeditated nature of the whole process. Sometimes my schedule would tell me to stop working and preserve my mind, just as I was getting into the thick of things, denying me the intellectual pleasure, and other times, it would be the opposite: I would be in a work period, violently struggling to keep my mind from zoning out.

Worst of all, because of this micromanagement, I was living life in the third person. I wasn't experiencing it first hand. I now call that the "lost summer". Once I realized this, I jettisoned the timers - I felt spontaneous again. I came up with incredibly creative ideas - my mind wandered, and it was a liberating freedom.

I feel like working under a timer does sharpen your focus - however, aren't there modes of thought which the pomodoro method is suppressing (i.e. creative, spontaneous thinking, where one is not so self-aware)? Moreover, don't these micromanaging tools prevent us from experiencing life?

Does anyone have any ideas on how to balance the pomodoro method with perhaps something else?