Over the past few decades, the technique has become more popular. Since the Italian for tomato is 'pomodoro,' he called his system the Pomodoro Technique after the original little tomato timer. And it helped-he was instantly more productive, at least when the timer was running.Īfter a bit of tweaking, testing, and refining, Cirillo settled on 25 minutes of work followed by a five-minute break, repeated four times, as the best balance for him. Cirillo started by setting it for 10 minutes and trying to just work for the 10 minutes until the timer rang. Inspiration came from a small tomato-shaped kitchen timer. He kept getting distracted and losing focus (and he didn't even have Instagram or TikTok), so he went looking for a way to keep his mind on track.

Even I can keep typing that long.įrancesco Cirillo developed the Pomodoro Technique in the 1980s when he was in college in Italy and struggling to study. I'm just seven minutes into my current work block, but I know I only have to wait 18 more minutes until my next cup of coffee. That's long enough that you can stay engaged and make real progress, without feeling like it's a grind, while the 5-minute breaks, which never feel far off, give you a chance to freely check Twitter or look at some emails without overly disrupting your workflow. The work blocks are just 25 minutes long. What makes the Pomodoro Technique so effective is just how easy it is to implement. I'm using it right now to write this article. As a professional writer, it's the tool I bust out whenever I need to hit a deadline or just get work done without dawdling. While it didn't single-handedly get me through my college degrees, it helped me get better grades with less effort. I've used the Pomodoro Technique (or variations on it that we'll look at later) for more than a decade. After that, you take a 15- to 30-minute break, depending on how you feel. Here's what you do: You set a timer for 25 minutes, work until it's up, then take a 5-minute break-and repeat the whole process three more times.

The Pomodoro Technique sounds unbelievably basic, but it works far better than you'd think. Toggl Track for combining Pomodoro with time-tracking Session for the best possible Pomodoro app for Apple users MarinaraTimer for a shareable web-based Pomodoro timer Pomodor for a simple web-based Pomodoro timer So, let's look at the best Pomodoro timers. While any timer (or timer app) will work for the Pomodoro Technique, a dedicated Pomodoro app can make the already simple technique even simpler by automatically alternating between work and break periods, tracking how many different periods you've completed, and generally just smoothing out the hassle of winding up a manual timer or constantly checking the clock.

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