Pomodoro timer on your new tab page

The cycle, and why the numbers are what they’re

Twenty-five on, five off, fifteen after every fourth round. Not arbitrary numbers, twenty-five is short enough that starting doesn’t feel like a commitment, and four rounds is roughly where attention gives up regardless of how the day is going.

All four are editable. The useful change is usually upward. Fifty and ten for work that takes a while to get into. Change them after a week of the defaults, though, not before.

Automatic hand-off

Phases can roll straight into the next one. Sounds like a minor convenience. It’s the setting that decides whether the technique survives a real day.

Off, every break ends with a decision to start again, and some of those decisions go the other way. On, the focus block has already begun by the time you look up. Work becomes the default and stopping takes a deliberate act.

The sound

A phase ending is useless information if you’re looking at a different tab. Which you’ll be, because the whole point is that you’re working. Hence a sound.

You can turn it off, and in a shared room you’ll. At which point the timer becomes something you check rather than something that tells you. That’s a real loss, and worth knowing before you decide the widget isn’t working for you.

Counting finished sessions

It tallies completed focus blocks. Four before lunch is a good morning stated as a number rather than a feeling, and a far better measure of a day than hours at a desk, because it only counts time you actually spent on one thing.

Next to a task list it becomes a record: the list says what got done, the counter says what it cost.

Pomodoro Timer settings

• Focus length — Twenty-five minutes by default.
• Short break — Five minutes between focus blocks.
• Long break — Fifteen minutes, after a set number of cycles.
• Cycles before a long break — Four by default.
• Auto-start next phase — Roll straight into the next block instead of waiting to be told.
• Sound — An alert at the end of each phase; can be switched off.
• Completed sessions — A running count of finished focus blocks.

What people use it for

• Study sessions, where the technique came from.
• Writing, where starting is the hard part and twenty-five minutes is a small enough ask.
• Breaking up a long afternoon of work that has no natural edges.
• Paired with a to-do list, one task per block.
• Forcing breaks on a day you would otherwise sit through in one go.