New Year resolutions are a promise of productivity — of doing something that you aren't already. One of the most popular productivity methods, the Pomodoro technique, is ideal to achieve your goals. And new web app Persevy makes it easier than ever to track your progress.

You need to know how to set and achieve your new year resolutions. Most people make the mistake of getting caught up in the turn of the calendar and decide to go all in. Stop. Take a breath. Your new year resolution is a marathon, not a sprint. The key to success lies in short, focused bursts of concentrated work. In other words, the Pomodoro technique.

What Is The Pomodoro Technique?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT70iCaG0Gs

Author and motivational speaker Francesco Cirillo invented the Pomodoro technique in the late 1980s. The "Pomodoro" is a tomato-shaped timer. Set it for 25 minutes and start your work. Focus only on your work and nothing else once the timer is on. When the alarm rings, stop working, no matter what point you are at, and take a five-minute break. Reset the timer after your break and start again.

The idea, essentially, is to keep your concentration honed. The human mind, Cirillo says, is not accustomed to focusing on something for long durations. By training your mind to focus for 25 minutes at a time and then giving it a rest, you can achieve more than you would by working for long hours at a stretch.

The other upside of the Pomodoro technique is that it is easy to use for anyone, can be applied in any environment, and requires simple tools. In fact, we have recommended some great Pomodoro productivity apps in the past. But a new contender has come up, which associates the technique with your intended task, charts it over time, and lets you gamify your productivity.

Meet Persevy, A Pomodoro Of Quests

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Persevy marries the Pomodoro technique with keeping track of what you do on your computer. Sign up and you'll be asked to name your quest. The "quest" is the objective, spread across several 25-minute sessions of productivity. You can either make a new quest of your own, or choose to "play" one of the quests created by other users. For example, if you write "programming" as the first word, you can choose from the related topics in the drop-down suggestions.

You can also browse through the Quests section, which lists all of the existing objectives, each with their ascribed sessions. Here, you can filter by quest names, popularity, or the skills involved.

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Skills are the other big part of Persevy. When you're creating a quest, you are also asked to write the skills you want to develop. It's all geared towards tracking your data in as many ways as possible.

When you're ready to work, start a quest and choose whether you want to be notified by a sound when the time is up.

How Persevy Helps Achieve Your Resolutions

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Tracking your progress is an important tactic to make resolutions stick. Persevy takes the pressure of tracking off your shoulders; instead, your job is to just start a task, and the app will take care of monitoring your progress or...lack of it.

Persevy lists daily statistics to show what you have achieved today, as well as charts your progress across weeks and months. These charts are sorted by the aforementioned skills, so you get to see how you are building a skill, not whether you are simply ticking off tasks. Data about progress in quests and your current level of skills is available in your personal dashboard.

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If you want to actually master a new skill, Persevy recommends using Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, which in a nutshell is the amount of time you need to become proficient at something new. However, there is no science to back this up, so take it more as a thumb rule than fact.

Persevy also has an active community on its own sub-Reddit, so you can track what's coming up in the project and motivate other users. For example, while Persevy doesn't have a mobile app right now, the developer has shared early screenshots of an Android app. But discussions are the key, which make it yet another way to use Reddit productively.

Persevy is free and ready to use right away as a beta release. Here's a walkthrough for more details:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzBYy1CS4Eo

Is the Pomodoro technique the best way to achieve results? Have you had any success or failure with it? Share your stories in the comments below.