Historical errata for Pomodoro Technique Illustrated

I love this book, from its hand-drawn cover to its quirky english. It’s hard to bring myself to suggest changes. However, in the last paragraph, “effort estimate” could be “effort estimation.”

Second paragraph: “…problems doesn’t go away.” s/b “…problems don’t go away.”

Third paragraph, last sentence: “…and then and then…” s/b “…and then….”

Second paragraph, second sentence: “…completing the activity that you worked on” could be “completing the activity that you are working on.”

Next to last paragraph: “…during last Pomodoro” s/b “…during the last Pomodoro.”

Second paragraph: “You collect process metrics during the day, it’s called the Tracking Stage.” This could be: “You collect process metrics during the day in what’s called the Tracking Stage.”

Section 1.8, fourth bullet point: “longer” s/b “more.”

It looks like this section is not nailed down yet, but in the last paragraph the redundant “million MIPS” appears a couple of times.

In the first paragraph: “The electrical activity produced by my brain and measured with EEG, the electrical activity of my heart and measured with ECG, and my breathing are just a few examples” seems unnecessarily technical. Why not: “The electrical activity produced by my brain, the electrical activity of my heart, and my breathing are just a few examples.”

Last paragraph, first sentence: maybe “desks” rather than “desktop.”

This whole section lacks focus. It rambles and introduces unnecessary information. Why do I need to know about unconditioned reflexes at all when the point is that I can condition myself positively in very simple ways?

On page 16, paragraph 4, replace “amount” with “number”.

Paragraph 2: “In the Pomodoro Technique, you select an amount of activities in the morning”—replace “amount of activities” with “number of tasks”. Also, “By actively pulling activities
to your To Do Today sheet”—replace “to” with either “onto” or “into” your To Do…and maybe “list” rather than “sheet”.

Style suggestion: Instead of “Also bear in mind that the probability to get into flow is much higher when you are rested, sitting down and start focusing, than when you just hang around and wait for inspiration”, perhaps “Also bear in mind that the prospects for getting into the flow are much better when you are rested, seated, and focused than when you are just hanging around waiting for inspiration.”

Paragraph 1: “four layered stack” should be four-layered stack".

I inherited the Brain Stem from the reptiles hundreds of million years ago —> delete the and then “reptile ancestors living hundreds of millions of years ago.”

The image appears to be upside down

Image appears to be upside down

Paragraph 3, Line 2. ‘so that I can temporary put’, should this be ‘so that I can temporarily put’?

Paragraph 4, line 2. ‘You may also write down when they last must be done.’. Should this read: ‘You may also write down when they must be done by.’ ?

Loving the illustrations, but the Cucumber and Artichoke story gets confused. Who introduced who to the idea?

Here, from chapter 1 (p 11) “Cucumber:\tI think you should try the Pomodoro Technique.”, then chapter 2 (p 23) “Cucumber: Did you try the Pomodoro Technique?”.

They change places in chapter 3 (p 48), “Artichoke: How are you progressing with the Pomodoro Technique?”. Again in chapter 4 (p 71) “Cucumber: Wait a minute, I just got an email…”.

Chapter 5 reads fine, and 6 is back to reverse-o-land! “Cucumber: Now that I’ve been doing the Pomodoro thing for a week, I’ve invented a derivate that I call PomdoroButt.”

That’s as far as I’ve got so far.

You write “The Phonological Loop stores what I see by rehearsing it.” but doesn’t the Phonological Loop deal with sound or auditory information rather than visual information.

The labels on the diagram on this page are grainy and difficult to make out.

The picture on this page is upside down. It doesn’t seem to be intentional. I hope I didn’t fail the stupid test.

“Her conclusion was that an visually isolated item”
I think should read:
“Her conclusion was that a visually isolated item”

(where people don’t pay too much attention at you
should read
(where people don’t pay too much attention to you

“The list is long and the continuous inwards flow ensures that
all activities can’t possibly be done ever.” would be better written with a comma at the end:
“The list is long and the continuous inwards flow ensures that
all activities can’t possibly be done, ever!”

“It depends on if your tired” - should be “It depends on if YOU’RE tired”

I would reword points 2 and 3 as such:

After how much time do you take a break when you work in pairs?
After how much time do you take a break when you work in groups?

Third sentence should read: “Still, the Pomodoro Technique…” it currently reads “Still, he Pomodoro Technique…”

“We inherited our brain stems from reptiles ancestors living hundreds of
millions of years ago.”

Perhaps rather…
“We inherited our brain stems from our reptile ancestors living hundreds of
millions of years ago.”

Instead of “Recurring gestures and routines
helps the brain adapt to the context.”

Perhaps…
“Recurring gestures and routines
help the brain adapt to the context.”

“a mobile phone possible set to vibrate”

should be…

“a mobile phone possibly set to vibrate”

The last sentence (starting with “The Pomodoro Technique has strategies…”) is not a continuation of the second bullet, and so should be outdented from the bulleted list.

“And what’s more, the people at the very top do not work very much harder or even harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder”.

This is a quote from Gladwell’s Outliers.

This passage did not make sense to me, so without the book I googled part of the quote. Consistently, the results said “And what’s more, the people at the top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else.”

This is different than the quote in the book, as indicated by the underscores around the words.

In this text: www transhumanist com / volume1 / moravec.htm

….it’s said that: “The 1,500 cubic centimeter human brain is about 100,000 times as large as the retina, suggesting that matching overall human behavior will take about 100 million MIPS of computer power.”

So the correct number should be 100 million MIPS.

Some book references are mixed-up.

1.\t[Gla06] Malcolm Gladwell. Blink. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 2006.
2.\tGunilla Ladberg, Den mänskliga hjärnan, Prisma, Stockholm, 2006.

Gladwell is credited three times when it should be Ladberg. I think we mixed them up because the names have similar prefixes, and the year 2006 is the same. Ladberg is not present in the bibliography, by now. It should be.

It should be like this:

•\tPage 32 ” The Brain Stack”, ref 1: Gunilla Ladberg
•\tPage 34 ”Rhythm”, ref 5: Gunilla Ladberg
•\tPage 51 ”Thin Slicing”, ref 19: Blink [Gla06] (this one is correct and justifies Blink in the bibliography)
•\tPage 70 “Detach”, ref 7, Gunilla Ladberg

I believe that the 3rd row in the record sheet (image) is incorrect. How can you know that the you under-estimated one activity by two Pomadori if there were zero reestimates?

In section 2.2.2 Scenario, the text talks about marking unplanned activities with a “U” but the diagram, figure 2.11 shows an “N” instead. Ive seen in both the printed edition and the PDF.

In the dialog in Chapter 4, Artichoke says, “Sorry Artie.” Should say sorry to Cucumber.

• The left column shows the estimation error of my initial estimation.
• The right column shows the number of re-estimates.

However the combination in the picture seems strange. When I over-estimate (1st, 2nd and 4th item) the right column must reasonably be 0 – no re-estimates. When I under-estimate (3rd item) the right column must be at least 1.

It says in the short term memory example the dissimilar words are easier to remember. This is the wrong way around because it goes on to say long term memory is the opposite yet then says the same that dissimilar words are easier to remember because their associative instead.