How to use this pomodoro timer
- Pick one task and press Start focus. The timer counts down 25 minutes.
- Allow notifications when asked, so you hear when the sprint ends while you work in another tab or app.
- When the sprint ends, take the break. It starts by itself and suggests something quick to do away from your screen, with a link to the Supabreak tool that helps.
- Press Start next sprint when you are back at your desk. The next sprint waits for you, so a break you miss never rolls straight into work.
- After every four sprints, take a longer 15-minute break. The dots under the timer show where you are in the cycle.
What is the Pomodoro Technique?
The Pomodoro Technique® is a time-management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. You work on one task for a set time, traditionally 25 minutes, then take a short break of about 5 minutes. Each work period is called a pomodoro, Italian for tomato, after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer Cirillo used as a student. After four pomodoros, you take a longer break.
The idea is that a short, fixed stretch of time is easier to start than an open-ended task, and that regular breaks help you keep going through the day. Many people also find that a visible countdown makes it easier to ignore distractions until the next break.
Pomodoro Technique® is a registered trademark of Francesco Cirillo. This timer is not affiliated with or endorsed by him; it uses "pomodoro" only to describe a work-and-break timer.
Why move in your breaks?
Most pomodoro timers count down the break and leave the rest to you, and it is easy to spend those five minutes on your phone, still sitting at your desk. Your eyes stay on a screen and your body stays in the same position.
A break works better as a real change. Getting up and walking around breaks up a long stretch of sitting, as health guidelines advise. Looking at something far away gives your eyes a rest from close-up focus. A glass of water, a few stretches or some slow breaths can leave you feeling fresher when the next sprint starts. That is why each break here comes with one small suggestion to move.
What to do in a pomodoro break
In a 5-minute break, pick one quick thing:
- Refill your water. The walk is a break in itself. The water intake calculator works out how much to drink in a day.
- Look out of a window at something far away for 20 seconds, as in the 20-20-20 rule.
- Stretch your neck, shoulders and wrists with a short desk exercise routine.
- Breathe slowly for a minute with box breathing.
In a longer break, take a short walk, outside if you can, have a snack away from your desk, follow a full stretch routine, or sit quietly for a few minutes with the meditation timer.
Choosing your sprint lengths
25 minutes of focus and 5 minutes of break is the classic rhythm, and a good place to start. It suits tasks that are easy to interrupt, such as email, admin or study, and days with lots of meetings.
For deep work, such as writing, design or programming, many people prefer longer sprints of 45 or 50 minutes with a 10-minute break. If you find it hard to get started at all, try 15 minutes: a short sprint is easier to begin. You can set sprints from 5 to 90 minutes, and change the breaks and the long break to match.
Whatever you choose, keep the breaks. A longer sprint makes a proper break more important, not less.
Tips for better focus sprints
- Decide what the sprint is for before you press Start, and stick to that one task.
- Silence chat and email notifications during a sprint, and catch up on them in the break.
- Keep a note of things that pop into your head, and deal with them later instead of switching tasks.
- If a sprint goes badly, skip to the break and start fresh. The next one is only a few minutes away.
- Install Supabreak as an app in Chrome or Edge, so the timer keeps running in its own window while you work.
Supabreak provides general wellbeing reminders and information, not medical advice.