The pomodoro technique — how to start, and why 25 minutes is enough
Twenty-five minutes of work, five of rest. The method is simple enough that it is easy to miss what it actually does — and the countdown is the least important part of it.
The pomodoro technique fits in one sentence: work for 25 minutes on one thing, take a 5 minute break, and after the fourth session take a longer one. The name comes from the tomato-shaped kitchen timer Francesco Cirillo used as a student in the late 1980s.
That simplicity is both the appeal and the trap. The appeal, because there is nothing to roll out — a timer will do. The trap, because the countdown is the easiest part to remember and the least important part of the method.
What actually does the work
Twenty-five is not a magic number. Three other things happen along the way, and they are what makes the difference.
You have to name what you are working on. This sounds trivial until you try it. "Work on the project" does not survive the question — you have to say which part, and that alone rules out half of the aimless circling that passes for work.
You commit to something short. An hour of focus is a promise the mind resists making, because it knows what it costs. Twenty-five minutes goes through without argument. Starting is harder than continuing, so lowering the cost of starting solves most of the problem.
The break is part of the method, not a reward for it. This is the part skipped most often and punished hardest. Four sessions back to back make the fourth markedly worse than the first, and you only notice the tiredness in the evening.
How to start, concretely
- Write down what needs doing before you start anything. Choosing a task while the timer runs eats the first minutes of the session.
- Take one item and estimate how many sessions it needs. You will be wrong, and that is fine — a week from now your estimates will be better, precisely because you are checking them.
- Start the timer and work on that only. When another thought arrives, write it on paper and carry on. The paper matters: an unrecorded thought comes back every minute.
- Take the break when the sound goes, even if it is going well. Especially then.
- After the fourth session, leave for fifteen minutes. Away from the screen, not to a different screen.
When 25 minutes is the wrong length
The method is a guide, not a rulebook. Some work takes twenty minutes just to get into — programming, writing, design — and for that a 45 or 90 minute session makes more sense. Other work makes 25 minutes feel like an age: answering email, tidying files, phone calls.
The one rule worth leaving alone is the one about breaks. Lengthening sessions without lengthening breaks ends the same way every time.
What the method will not do
It will not decide what matters. Eight sessions spent on something that did not need to exist are eight sessions wasted with excellent concentration. A timer answers "did I work", not "did I work on the right thing" — and the second question decides considerably more.
Which is why it is worth recording not only the time but whether the thing you planned actually got finished. After a fortnight that record shows something a total of hours never will: which tasks keep turning out bigger than they looked.
Try it now
The pomodoro timer in Ordiarion works without an account — type the task, set the length, and when the sound goes answer one question: did you finish or not. The last three sessions stay in your browser.
If you bill your time to clients, see also how to turn sessions into billable hours.