Twenty-five minutes. One thing.

How the Pomodoro Technique works

1. Choose one task.
2. Work on it, and only it, for 25 minutes.
3. When the timer rings, stop and take a 5-minute break.
4. After four rounds, take a longer break of 15 to 30 minutes.

Francesco Cirillo developed the method as a university student in the late 1980s and named it after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer he used; pomodoro is Italian for tomato. Each 25-minute round is one pomodoro.

Why something this simple helps

Twenty-five minutes is short enough to start. "Work on the report" has no edge to it; "work on the report until the chime" does. The break is part of the method too: knowing a rest is coming makes it easier to ignore the urge to check something right now.

Rules that make it work

• A round is indivisible. If you break off to answer a message, the round does not count. Jot the distraction on paper and go back.
• Take the break. Stand up, look out of a window, get water. A break spent scrolling is not much of a break.
• Size tasks in rounds. Anything bigger than about five rounds should be split; anything tiny can be batched with others.
• Change the lengths if you need to. 50 / 10 suits deep work that takes a while to get into. 15 / 3 suits days when starting is the hard part.

The weak point

A timer tells you when to work. It does nothing about the phone lying next to the keyboard, and one glance during a round is usually the end of it. Put the phone in another room, or block the apps that pull at you for the length of the round.