Poppy Bilderbeck
Tom Hanks has revealed what technique he adopted to help him write his latest book.
Hanks isn't just one of Hollywood's most beloved actors and filmmakers, but he's so overflowing with talent he also writes books.
Now, Hanks is no stranger to putting pen to paper, having written a short story collection called Uncommon Type published in 2017, however, this year marks the release of his debut novel and Hanks employed the help of a productivity hack to help get the job done.
With social media platforms such as TikTok making our minds jittery if having to focus on anything for longer than six seconds, the technique is certainly worth a shot - and if it's used by Hanks, what's not to love? The question is, what is this miraculous productivity hack that helped Hanks write a 448-page novel?
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The novel, titled The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, is set in the world of moviemaking and spans 80 years of 'a changing America'.
The synopsis on Amazon reads: "We meet a colourful cast of characters including a troubled soldier returning from war, a young boy with an artistic gift, an inspired and eccentric director, a pompous film star on the rise, a tireless production assistant and countless film crew members that together create Hollywood magic."
But writing a 448-page novel about the film industry with a huge array of characters is no easy feat - even for someone like Hanks - and so the actor adopted a productivity hack he read about in The New York Times to help him focus.
The trick in question? Hanks told The Atlantic he used a hack called the Pomodoro Technique.
The Pomodoro Technique was created by Francesco Cirillo when he was struggling to focus on his sociology revision at university.
It's 'a time management method based on 25-minute stretches of focused work broken by five-minute breaks'.
"Longer breaks, typically 15 to 30 minutes, are taken after four consecutive work intervals," Tech Target continues.
However, it wasn't only productivity Hanks struggled with while writing his first novel.
With the novel centred around the creation of a superhero movie titled Knightshade: The Lathe of Firefall, Hanks decided writing a script for the fictional film would aid the construction of the overall plot.
Of his debut novel, Hanks said: "Movie making is very hard work over a very long period of time that consists of so many moments of joy slapped up against an equal number of feelings of self-loathing. It is the greatest job in the world and the most confounding of labours that I know of.
"I hope the book captures as much of ‘the accidental judgements and casual slaughter’ that go into a motion picture’s dictum to hold ‘a mirror up to nature’ that I have witnessed (and caused) since I joined the Screen Actors Guild."
The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, published by Penguin Random House (PRH) was released in the UK and US today (Tuesday, 9 May, 2023).