The Pomodoro Technique: 25 minutes of focus, short breaks, and the rules behind it

The Pomodoro® Technique is a way of working in short, focused intervals. You choose a task, set a timer for 25 minutes, and work on nothing else until it rings. Then you mark an X, take a short break, and start again. After four intervals, called Pomodoros, you take a longer break. Around that simple rhythm, its creator built a full method for planning your day, handling interruptions and learning from what happened.

This guide explains the Pomodoro Technique as Francesco Cirillo describes it, the mistakes that turn it into "just a timer", and what Barside, a free desktop app for Windows, Linux and Mac, can do for it. One thing up front: Barside has no timer.

Where the Pomodoro Technique comes from

Francesco Cirillo tells the origin on his official site: "I created the Pomodoro® Technique in the 1980s with a tomato-shaped kitchen timer and a problem: I couldn't focus on my university studies." Another of his pages places it "back in the late 1980s". Pomodoro is Italian for tomato.

His original paper, "The Pomodoro Technique", dated October 19, 2006, presents the technique "as defined in 1992 by the author, and as taught to individuals since 1998 and to teams since 1999." So the idea dates from the late 1980s, and Cirillo dates its formal definition to 1992. His book, The Pomodoro Technique, came out in August 2018.

How the Pomodoro Technique works

Plan the day

Each morning, choose the day's tasks from your Activity Inventory, the list of everything you might do, and write them on a To Do Today sheet. Those are the two sheets of paper the original paper describes.

Work for one Pomodoro

Set the timer for 25 minutes and work on the first task. In the paper's words: "The traditional Pomodoro is 30 minutes long: 25 minutes of work plus a 5-minute break."

Mark it and take a short break

When the timer rings, put an X next to the task and take a break of 3 to 5 minutes.

Take a longer break every four

After every four Pomodoros, take a longer break of 15 to 30 minutes.

Keep each Pomodoro whole

"A Pomodoro Is Indivisible." There are no half Pomodoros. If something truly interrupts you and breaks the Pomodoro, it is void, and you start a new one.

Note interruptions instead of acting on them

When an interruption comes up, inside your head or from someone else, write it down and deal with it later, rather than breaking the Pomodoro. Over time you learn what interrupts you and how often.

The five stages

The full process has five stages. In our own words, they cover:

Common Pomodoro Technique mistakes

Cirillo names the biggest mistake himself: reducing the method to "Work for 25 minutes, then take a break." His official site calls it a complete productivity system, not just a timer, with planning, interruption handling and effort estimation. As he puts it: "Your goal isn't to complete Pomodoros. Your goal is to become aware of what happens in your mind."

Other mistakes follow from the rules:

• Pausing the timer. A Pomodoro is indivisible. Pausing to answer a quick message turns it into something else.
• Skipping breaks. The breaks are part of the rhythm, not a reward you have to earn.
• Acting on every interruption. Write it down and return to it later, unless it truly cannot wait.
• Never recording. Without the Recording, Processing and Visualizing stages, you never learn how many Pomodoros a task really takes.
• Treating the X count as a score. More Pomodoros is not the goal. Awareness of how you work is.

How to use the Pomodoro Technique with Barside

Barside cannot replace the timer. It has no countdown, and a reminder on a note or task is an alert at a set time, not a timer you start with one click. For the 25 minutes, use a kitchen timer, as Cirillo did, or the timer on your phone or computer.

What Barside does well is everything around the timer: the Activity Inventory, the daily sheet, the interruption list and the records, with tables and charts for the last two stages.

Activity Inventory

Make a note called Activity Inventory with a checklist of everything you might work on. Every item is also a task on the task board, under No due date until you plan it. Press Alt+Shift+Space in any app and type task and the words to add one without leaving what you are doing.

To Do Today, made for you each morning

1. Create a note titled To Do Today with three parts: a checklist for the day's tasks, a short table with Task, Estimate and Pomodoros columns, and an Interruptions checklist at the bottom.
2. Open Note options, choose Save as template, and name it.
3. In Settings, under Templates & repeating notes, make it a repeating note Every weekday at the time you start. A fresh sheet appears each morning, with a quiet New note ready notification.

Pin the note to the edge of your screen so the day's sheet stays in view while you work. See note templates and repeating notes.

Tracking

When the timer rings, type an X in the task's Pomodoros cell. When an interruption comes up, add a line to the Interruptions checklist and go straight back to work. During the next break, decide what to do with it.

Estimate, then compare

Effort estimation is one of the parts the official site lists beside planning and interruption handling. In the morning, write in the Estimate column how many Pomodoros you expect each task to take. In the evening, compare it with the Xs you made. A task you guessed at two that took five is worth a closer look: was it bigger than it seemed, or did interruptions eat it?

A sample morning

Say your To Do Today note lists three tasks: draft the newsletter (estimate 3), review a pull request (1) and plan next week's posts (2). You start the timer and draft for 25 minutes, then mark an X and stretch for five. A colleague's question arrives during the second Pomodoro, so you add Reply to Sam about the budget to Interruptions and keep drafting. After the fourth Pomodoro, you take a longer break, and answer Sam then.

Recording, Processing and Visualizing

1. In a note called Pomodoro records, type /database to add a database table. Give it columns such as Date (Date), Pomodoros (Number), Interruptions (Number) and Kind of work (Choice).
2. At the end of each day, add one row per task or one row for the day.
3. Under each column, Calculate gives you totals, like the Sum and Average of Pomodoros, for the rows that show. A filter on Kind of work shows the totals for one kind.
4. Under the table, type /chart. In Chart settings, group by Date with Line to see Pomodoros per day or per month, or group by Kind of work with Bars to see where your focus goes. See charts in notes.

After a few weeks, the table answers the questions the technique is built to raise: how many Pomodoros a kind of task really takes, and how often you get interrupted.

Who the Pomodoro Technique suits

• Students who find it hard to focus on their studies, as Cirillo did.
• Writers, developers and designers whose work needs unbroken focus.
• People who procrastinate, because 25 minutes is easier to start than "the whole afternoon".
• Anyone who wants data on their own work, through the recording stages.

It suits people less in roles full of necessary interruptions, or for work that needs long uninterrupted stretches once you are in flow. In that case, longer blocks from time blocking may fit better.

Related methods

• Time blocking, to plan which work happens when, with Pomodoros inside the blocks.
• The Eisenhower matrix, to decide which tasks earn your Pomodoros.
• Personal kanban, to see your work in progress and keep it small.
• Getting Things Done, for the lists your daily plan comes from.