90/20 Pomodoro Timer
Ninety minutes of deep focus followed by a proper twenty-minute rest: the longest rhythm on this site.
90 min focus, 20 min break: a cycle is 110 min, 82% of it focus
| Time set aside | Full rounds | Focus time |
|---|---|---|
| 2 h | 1 | 1 h 30 min |
| 4 h | 2 | 3 h |
| 8 h | 4 | 6 h |
Who it suits
One or two big blocks a day of your hardest work: a chapter, a design problem, a tough piece of code, done before the day fills with messages.
The trade-off
It only works if you can protect ninety minutes. If you cannot sustain the focus, the second half turns into re-reading the same page. In that case drop to 50/10, which costs you little but the ceiling.
Where the numbers come from
Ninety minutes echoes the roughly 90 minute rest-activity cycle described by sleep researcher Nathaniel Kleitman. Whether that cycle governs daytime attention is debated, so take it as a rule of thumb rather than settled science.
Making it work
- Do it early, before email, and plan only two blocks in a day.
- Use the twenty minutes properly: food, a walk, daylight. It is not a slot for messages.
- Note where you will resume before you stop, so the next block starts quickly.
Questions
- Is the 90 minute cycle scientifically proven?
- A rest-activity cycle of about 90 minutes is well documented in sleep. Whether it controls attention while you are awake is disputed, so use 90/20 as an experiment and keep it only if it works for you.
- What should I do in the 20 minute break?
- Something that is not a screen: eat, walk outside, stretch. The point of a long break is a change of state, not a different feed to scroll.