25/5 Pomodoro Timer
The original: 25 minutes of focus, 5 minutes of rest, repeated. Francesco Cirillo built the technique around a tomato-shaped kitchen timer in the late 1980s, and this is still what most people mean by a pomodoro.
25 min focus, 5 min break: a cycle is 30 min, 83% of it focus
| Time set aside | Full rounds | Focus time |
|---|---|---|
| 2 h | 4 | 1 h 40 min |
| 4 h | 8 | 3 h 20 min |
| 8 h | 16 | 6 h 40 min |
Who it suits
It suits almost any task you can cut into small pieces: email, admin, revision, first drafts. If you are new to timed work, start here before tuning anything, because nearly every guide, app and study group assumes these numbers.
The trade-off
Twenty-five minutes can feel short for deep work that takes a while to load into your head. If you regularly hit the bell just as things click, try 50/10 or 52/17. If you keep quitting early because the task feels heavy, try 20/5.
Where the numbers come from
The 25 minutes is simply what Cirillo's kitchen timer was set to. There is no research showing it is optimal; it is short enough to protect from distraction and long enough to make progress, which is why it stuck.
Making it work
- This page runs Steadbrook's Pomodoro mode, so every fourth break is a longer 15 minute one.
- In the classic method an interrupted pomodoro does not count. Reset and start it again rather than counting a broken round.
- Choose the task before you press start. A pomodoro spent deciding what to work on is a wasted one.
Questions
- Why 25 minutes?
- It is what the original kitchen timer was set to, not the result of an experiment. It works because it is short enough to feel doable and long enough to get somewhere.
- Do I have to stop when the timer rings?
- The method says yes, and the discipline is part of why it works: the break is what makes the next round possible. If you are mid-thought, finish the sentence, not the section.