The Tomatoes of Time

By Trish Ryan

I'm a total sucker for time-management techniques. I'm a little bit in love with the idea that time can be "managed" (because in my experience it's pretty incorrigible), and it's fun to get a peak into how other people spend their days.

Two days ago, I read about a new idea for increasing productivity called The Pomodoro Technique. It's pretty simple: set a timer for 25 minutes, work diligently & resist distractions, when the timer goes off, stand up and move around for 5 minutes. Then repeat. Not exactly nuclear fusion. What enticed me about this system wasn't it's format, but it's name: When the founder first tried this, he used a kitchen timer in the shape of atomato. He came to think of each 25 minute unit of time as "a tomato"...which in Italian is called "a pomodoro." Thus, an entire business--a book, website, helpful worksheets--was born.

Now, I can't think of a single day over the past 10-12 months where approaching my to-do list in 25 minute segments would be anything less than weird. It's just not that sort of season. But for some reason, the image of time coming in units of produce makes me hilariously happy. (If Forrest Gump can see life like a box of chocolates, it's not too far to stretch to imagine each new day as a new box of tomatoes, right?)

Yesterday morning, I had a "3-and-a-half tomato meeting." How fun is that? Then later, when my schedule was thrown off by a phone call from a friend I haven't had a chance to talk to in awhile, I had this funny mental picture of all my well-planned tomatoes being hurled into the air, and thought, "Well, I guess I'm making sauce..." It was a fun perspective change, a way to recognize that in my daily efforts, I'm not always aware of the larger recipe being mixed together. In Biblical, non-tomato terms, in our hearts we plan our steps, but God determines our course. (Proverbs 16:9)

So this morning, as THAT DOG and I slogged around the block in the early morning cold, I told God, "Here...I'm giving you all my tomatoes. Please make them into whatever You'd like."

I don't think we control our tomatoes. I'm okay with that :)