Pomodoro Timer

It is a time management method in which you work in fixed intervals, traditionally twenty-five minutes, separated by short breaks, with a longer break after every fourth interval. Each completed interval is called a pomodoro.

Francesco Cirillo developed it as a student in the late 1980s and named it after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer he was using. The recording step, where you mark each completed interval against a task, is the part most people skip and the part that makes it useful.

There is nothing magic about twenty-five minutes. Cirillo settled on it because it was long enough to make progress and short enough that committing to it felt easy, which is still the best argument for it.

Plenty of people do better at fifty or ninety minutes, particularly for work with a long warm-up like writing or coding. Change the interval in the settings and see which length you finish most reliably.

Yes. The countdown is calculated from a fixed end timestamp rather than by counting ticks, so even when a browser throttles background tabs the remaining time stays correct and catches up instantly when you return.

The countdown also shows in the tab title while it runs, so you can keep an eye on it from another window. Closing the tab entirely will stop it, since nothing runs on a server.

Something that does not use the same attention you were just using. Stand up, stretch, get water, look at something more than a few metres away, or step outside. The physical change of state is most of the value.

Scrolling social media or reading email is not a break in any meaningful sense, because it keeps the same faculty working. It also tends to expand well past five minutes.

For an internal interruption, a thought about something else, write it down in a couple of words and return to the task. Deal with it in the break. Most of them turn out not to need dealing with at all.

For a genuine external interruption that cannot wait, the orthodox answer is that the pomodoro is void: handle it, then start a fresh one. In practice, pausing is fine. The rule exists to discourage treating interruptions as normal, not to punish you.

They are stored in your own browser on this device, so they will still be there next time you open the page. Nothing is sent to a server and there is no account.

That does mean they will not follow you to another device or survive clearing your browser data, and private browsing windows will forget everything when closed. There is a button in the settings to wipe them yourself whenever you want.

Many people with ADHD find the structure helpful, because an external timer supplies the time awareness and the clear start signal that are hardest to generate internally. Shorter intervals, around ten to fifteen minutes, are often a better fit than the standard twenty-five.

It is a productivity method rather than a treatment, and it will not suit everyone. If focus difficulties are significantly affecting your work or study, that is worth discussing with a doctor rather than solving with a timer.

The strict answer is yes, because the discipline of stopping is what keeps the intervals meaningful and prevents the three-hour session that wrecks the rest of the day.

The practical answer is that interrupting genuine flow is expensive, and if it keeps happening your interval is simply too short. Finish the thought, then lengthen the focus block rather than repeatedly overrunning a setting that does not fit you.