Pomodoro.

The Pomodoro Technique is dead simple: pick one thing, work on it for 25 minutes without switching, take a 5-minute break, repeat. After four 25-minute blocks, take a longer 15–30 minute break and start over. Named after a tomato-shaped kitchen timer (pomodoro = tomato in Italian) by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s.

// WHY IT WORKS

Two reasons. First, 25 minutes is short enough to commit to without dread — “I’ll do just 25 minutes” is a much easier sell than “I’ll do focused work all afternoon.” Second, the forced break interrupts the diminishing-returns curve before fatigue sets in, so the next block starts fresh instead of grinding.

// HOW TO USE THIS TIMER

• Start — begin the current phase. Press once and walk away.
• Pause — freeze the countdown if you have to take a phone call. Resume picks up where you left off.
• Skip — jump straight to the next phase. Useful if you finish early or got pulled away.
• Reset all cycles — clear the cycle counter back to zero. Use at the start of a new session.

// CUSTOMIZE

The defaults are a starting point. Coding might want 50/10. Deep writing or design might want 90/15. Adjust the WORK, BREAK, LONG BREAK, and CYCLES fields below the timer — they save to your browser so you don’t have to re-enter every visit.

// AUDIO CUE

A short beep marks each phase transition — higher pitch when work ends (time to relax), lower when a break ends (back to it). Browsers block audio until you interact with the page, so the first Start click also unlocks the speaker.