On a cloudy September afternoon in 1987, German-Italian programmer Francesco Cirillo was trying to study for his sociology exam. He couldn’t concentrate. “I made a humble bet with myself,” he says. “‘Can you stay focused for two minutes without distraction?’”
Cirillo grabbed a timer from his kitchen, wound it up, and started reading his book. It worked. Francesco’s tomato-shaped clock rang after just 120 seconds, but the moment he looked up from his book, still half-lost in its pages, the Pomodoro Technique was born.
“For the first time, I had managed to turn time into an ally,” Cirillo writes. Right when they most appeared to be his enemy, he finally started using his seconds instead of running away from them.
For the next five years, Cirillo kept refining the method. Since 1998, he’s taught it to millions of people around the globe. And his book The Pomodoro Technique is now in its third edition.
I first discovered the Pomodoro Technique around ten years ago, and I wrote about it as early as 2015. Since then, I’ve completed well over 10,000 Pomodoros to write millions of words. In the last 12 months alone, my productivity app tells me I’ve completed over 1,400 sessions averaging around 50 minutes each.
Here’s everything you need to know about this amazing tool.
What Exactly Is the Pomodoro Technique?
In essence, the Pomodoro Technique is a simple time management method that breaks work into 25-minute, undistracted, single-tasking chunks, followed by 5-minute breaks. It makes work feel less overwhelming and helps users focus on individual to-dos for longer periods of time.
Cirillo is of Italian descent. He used to spend his summers in his family’s home in Sutri, 50 km north of Rome. The first time he tried to focus on just one task, he grabbed the first timer he could find. It happened to be one shaped like a tomato. Hence the name “Pomodoro Technique:” It’s the Italian word for “tomato.”
Okay, So How Does It Work?
At its core, the Pomodoro Technique only has 4 steps:
- Choose a task.
- Set a timer for 25 minutes.
- Work only on that task until the timer ends.
- When the timer rings, take a 5-minute break.
This 30-minute unit of work time and break time is considered one “Pomodoro.” For optimal results, Cirillo suggests doing four Pomodoros in a row, followed by a longer break of up to 30 minutes. In his book, he also offers 11 additional rules as well as three sheets you can use to integrate Pomodoros into a coherent overall process for your work.
Nice, but WHY Does It Work?
According to Cirillo, the two main benefits of the technique are:
- Being more gentle with yourself about using your time well.
- Making time an ally, especially when it most feels like an enemy.
Common sense suggests several others:
- 25 minutes are enough to make substantial progress on a well-chosen task.
- 25 minutes are easy to sit through and slog out, even when it’s not going well.
- The technique forces you to define your tasks well and do so in advance.
- Knowing exactly where your time went makes it easier to feel proud at the end of the day.
Writer Kat Boogaard sees two more:
- The timer creates a sense of urgency, especially if it’s a physical, ticking one.
- You’ll feel less frazzled at the end of the day.
On the Todoist blog, Laura Scroggs additionally suggests that:
- The technique makes it easy to just get started on a task, even if it feels daunting when considered as a whole.
- Pomodoros are like points in a game. It’s easy to stay motivated, collect more Pomodoros, and try to do better each round.
Finally, scientifically speaking…
- More short breaks might be better than one long one.
- Pomodoros are a primary task that allows you to justify dismissing distractions. Therefore, they reduce the switching costs of multitasking.
- Time-boxing combats Parkinson’s law, which states that “work expands to fill however much time is available.”
Personally, the advantage I’ve most benefited from over the years is the excuse to just start as soon as the timer begins. Often, I stay with a task longer than 25 minutes once the seconds tick away. The second-most helpful feature has been having a visual combined with a dedicated time block. I’m far from immune to distractions, but this way, whenever I see the timer + task name, it reminds me that, right now, I’m only supposed to work on one thing. Often, that’s enough to get me back on track.
Cool — Now How Can I Get the Most Out of This?
Every person is different. So how exactly you should adapt the Pomodoro Technique for maximum effect will be up to you. That said, based on my research into the science of habits and having used the tool for almost a decade, here are five observations that might help:
- Use a physical timer: While there are plenty of digital timers around — I’ve used Cirillo’s official one and TomatoTimer — even the minimal effort of picking up a clock, winding it, and then listening to it tick and ring will make a profound difference. The digital world is where most of our distractions come from. Separating your timer from your screen will make it a real, physical cue your brain can form a mental loop around. Similarly, tracking Pomodoros with pen and paper will further cement the habit.
- Use the timer during breaks as well: Whereas 25 minutes of focus will feel long in the beginning, 5 minutes of break time will always pass in a jiffy. Timing both will quickly show you how much time you spend procrastinating.
- Actually stick to the timer: This is the hardest yet most important part. Your ability to single-task won’t return overnight, and you’ll never end every break right on time (I still don’t), but the more you commit to your Pomodoros, the more you’ll get out of them. And even when you feel discouraged, as Cirillo always says: “The next Pomodoro will go better.”
- Chunk your work accordingly: As you map out tasks and projects, try to split them into Pomodoro-sized chunks from the get-go. You won’t always nail it, but that’ll make it easier to stay motivated and keep going.
- Customize the length of your Pomodoros: As a writer, it can take me 10–15 minutes just to get into a groove. So for me, 50 minutes of typing followed by a 10-minute break works better than the usual 25–5 schedule. Meanwhile, if your task is fast-paced but intense, like making cold calls, you might want to try 15–2, and so on. Find an ideal Pomodoro size for your kind of work, different tasks, and personal energy levels, and you’ll have an easier time sticking to each one.
All You Need To Know
The Pomodoro Technique is a simple but effective way to manage your time. Invented by a frustrated college student as an antidote to procrastination in the late 1980s, it turns time from your enemy into your ally by chunking your work into manageable bites.
In using a physical timer to work in focused 25-minute blocks, followed by also-timed 5-minute breaks, you’ll single-task more, burn out less, have more fun, and feel prouder about your daily accomplishments.
For maximum effect, break down your to-do list in advance, rigorously rely on and stick to your physical timer, and experiment with session length until you find what works best for you — as it still does for me, almost ten years and over 10,000 sessions later.
For more about this marvelous tool, you can read The Pomodoro Technique — a book written by its inventor in the wonderful hope that…
“One day we will be more creative, more productive and yet more relaxed.”
— Francesco Cirillo