Pomodoros: Good, Better, Best
“Aren’t Pomodoros bad for flow? I feel like I’m just getting into a task and the timer tells me to stop.”
– Silvia G. (St. Gallen, Switzerland)
A valid concern!
The Pomodoro technique is a popular time management and productivity tactic. It’s designed to make it easier to get into focus mode by choosing a specific task to work on, setting a specific focus duration (usually 25 or 50 minutes), and a specific start time: the moment you start your timer. Then it also helps prevent burnout by setting an end time and a specific rest and recharge period (usually 5 or 10 minutes), plus a longer break after you’ve completed a few rounds (usually 4).
Between helping you start and stop, Pomodoros can help strike a balance between work and relaxation.
But does switching out of focus mode when the timer goes off kill flow? After all, true flow involves your brain being in an entirely different brain wave pattern, and some people estimate that it takes 15 minutes to get into it. If your focus session is only planned for 25 minutes, then that doesn’t leave you much time in flow before the end of your Pomodoro is breaking rather than supporting your focus.
The short answer is that for most people, getting and staying on task is difficult enough that the benefits of Pomodoros far outweigh the costs. Breaking focus and flow can’t possibly hurt you if you weren’t in flow in the first place! Would you rather get some sh*t done for 25-50 minutes and then pause when a timer goes off, or would you rather procrastinate and spend most of that time staring at your phone or into the abyss?
The long answer is that it depends how you use the Pomodoros. There are more and less effective ways to use them, as my coaching client Silvia discovered. After she asked this question, we found ways to adapt Pomodoros to her needs, such that she ended up reclaiming five hours of energized, productive time every week.
You can do the same, or even better.
READ WHAT YOU NEED!
If you’ve never used Pomodoros at all, start with the section about how Pomodoros are basically “Good.”
If you’ve tried them and haven’t loved your results, you might want to go to the section about how they can be “Better.”
If you’ve had success with them but want to make them even more effective and productive, you can jump to the section about making them the “Best.”
Good: Get Into Focused Flow
For most people, the biggest bottleneck is not breaking flow, but not getting into it in the first place. If you ever find yourself still unclear what you’re trying to accomplish after an hour of “working,” then you know what I’m talking about.
Getting into work mode requires overcoming a certain “activation energy” that makes your brain want to keep doing whatever it’s doing and not switch into a new mode. Flawed or not, using a Pomodoro helps overcome that activation energy by priming your brain to switch at the specific timepoint that you have decided to start a focus session, rather than some vague time in the future that could be 5 minutes or 5 hours from now.
Pomodoros also help keep you in productive mode once you’re there. How often do you start getting into it after 10 minutes, then get distracted by a text, email, notification, or nearby conversation, and the next thing you know half an hour has passed and you’ve still done only those 10 minutes of work? Setting an intention to focus for 25-50 minutes primes your brain to ignore distractions, especially if you pair focus sessions with Do Not Disturb mode on your devices or other focus hacks to protect that time.
So if you’ve never used Pomodoros or feel like you struggle to even get into flow in the first place, Pomodoros are an effective way to improve.
ACTION POTENTIALS
💡 Right now and/or put plans on your calendar: Test out using Pomodoros for greater focus and productivity, whether it be for the first time or just a bit more consistently than you have in the past.
Better: Avoid Interrupting Your Flow State
Now let’s assume that you’ve used Pomodoros before but they didn’t seem to work all that well for you. Perhaps you have the same question and concern that Silvia expressed above: do they interrupt flow when you end one?
Not when used correctly. In fact, they often help preserve it.
Your brain naturally runs in 90- to 120-minute cycles called ultradian rhythms — waves of cognitive alertness followed by dips. If you push through the dip, your performance tends to tank and you burn out your chance of flow later. Pomodoros remind you to pause and step off the wave before the crash, not after, so your brain recovers and returns to flow much more easily.
Well-timed breaks boost overall flow and productivity. The graph on the left shows your productivity is you push through one big focus session and get burned out. On the right, we see the effects of taking short regular breaks. Which one do you think has a greater blue area under the curve, representing your total focus and energy?
The three ways you might be using Pomodoros incorrectly
Pomodoros only mess up flow if your brain switches gears during the break. This can happen in 3 ways:
1. Your break is too long.
If your brain gets on a new wavelength (literally, not metaphorically), then you have to start from scratch to get it back. The longer you take a break, the more likely your brain wave pattern breaks.
SOLUTION: Keep breaks to 15 minutes or less.
2. Your break introduces new mental stimulation.
Even if your rest period is brief, it only takes a second to snap into a new set of emotions or trains of thought if you let yourself be exposed to things that can trigger them. Anything on your phone or computer is extremely likely to redirect your attention because screen activities distract and stimulate your brain rather than relaxing and recharging it.
SOLUTION: No screens during your break! Instead, take a walk, breathe, exercise, hydrate, socialize, look out a window, or try other screen-free recharge ideas.
3. Your focus session is too short…or too long.
Although you can avoid dropping out of flow during Pomodoro pauses, every break period increases the chance of a break in flow. Logically, the less often you take breaks, the longer you can stay in flow.
But wait! That doesn’t mean you should do massive, 4-hour focus sessions, hoping to stay in flow the whole time. That might work occasionally, but it’s not sustainable. Remember how we said that pushing through your natural ultradian rhythm leads to burnout and exhaustion? Just like muscles, your nervous system needs time to cool down, dispose of waste, and recover. If you overwork yourself for too long, getting into flow or even just basic productivity becomes extremely difficult.
That’s often why we feel so done at the end of a workday – not because the total amount of work was more than your brain could handle, but rather because it’s screaming at you to give it a rest. Just like in a race, pacing yourself is the best way to go the furthest, the fastest.
SOLUTION: To avoid focus sessions that are too short or too long, figure out what schedule works with your natural brain rhythms. Pomodoro proponents often recommend 25 minutes on, 5 off (25-5). Or 50-10. But research on ultradian rhythms suggests 90-20 or 120-20. Meanwhile, some studies show that even 1-minute breaks are effective! So what’s best?
It depends on your brain. If you want to make sure that they work for you instead of against you, test out using Pomodoros of different lengths to see which ones work best for you:
- Try various patterns: 25-5, 50-10, 90-20, etc. You might also test different super-breaks after multiple rounds: an extra 10 or 30 minutes after 4 rounds or 6, for example.
- Use a timer to stay honest.
- Then assess: How focused and effective were you? How restorative were the breaks?
- If needed, change to shorter focus sessions and longer breaks. Or challenge yourself and build up to longer focus sessions and shorter breaks. Tweak until you’re happy with your results, then stick with your pattern.
Some tips:
- I recommend you assess after the fact, not in the moment, because the more fatigued your brain becomes, the worse it gets at noticing fatigue and poor performance.
- Watch for signals of when you’re crashing and probably should have stopped sooner: yawning, sighing, restlessness, hunger, thirst, aches, losing your train of thought, etc.
Silvia realized that 50-5 worked well for longer flow states in the morning, but left her drained and off-task in the afternoon. After a couple experiments, she switched to 50-10 before lunch, and 25-5 after. That strategy gained her five more hours of productive time every week, and every hour feels more energized and focused!
Unlocking the full benefits of Pomodoros while avoiding the pitfalls can be just that easy.
ACTION POTENTIALS
💡 Right now and/or put plans on your calendar: Follow the simple steps above to discover which lengths of focus session and break time work best for maintaining your focus, energy, and flow.
Best: Train Your Brain for More Flow, Less Breaking
All right, now you’re at a place where you’re reasonably confident that your Pomodoros are optimized for your specific needs and are serving you well.
Well, now I suggest changing them up again. 😈
Why? Because of neuroplasticity. Your brain rewires to get better at whatever it does. That means that just like working out our muscles, we can gradually overload our brain to gently push it out of its comfort zone and make it do something new – which it will then get better at doing.
That means that if you want to refine your productivity more and more, you can train your brain to feel totally comfortable with longer focus sessions and shorter/fewer breaks.
For example, if you currently tend to work for 25 minutes and rest for 5 (25-5), 50-5 might sound exhausting. But that’s just because your brain isn’t used to it yet. If you progressively increase the time to 30 minutes one week, then 40 the next, then 50 the next, your brain will adapt so that 50-5 feels as easy as 25-5 did before.
(If you aren’t positive that you’re currently using interval lengths that work ideally for your brain, I suggest starting with the “Better” section so you can ensure you’re starting from your true baseline, not far below or above it.)
Or you can gradually shift from 50-10 to 90-20. Or 90-20 to 90-10. Or 90-10 to 120-10.
You get the idea. In each case, gradually ramping up the difficulty is probably most effective: some people succeed with big jumps all at once, especially if you know you’ve been performing beneath your potential; but for most people, sudden jumps aren’t nearly as sustainable as endurance built up over time.
If you want to optimize your time even more, simply set a goal and start working out your noggin!
ACTION POTENTIALS
💡 Right now and/or put plans on your calendar: Set a goal and make a plan of how you will ramp up your endurance for even more focus and flow.
Focus on Your Bottleneck
You may be at a stage where simply getting productive is a challenge. That’s ok. Focus on using Pomodoros to get into a productive state – don’t worry about the details, just do it.
You may be frustrated with how they seem to interrupt your flow. That’s ok. Focus on experimenting with the way you do them until you find a way that works well for you to keep the baby and throw out the bathwater.
You may feel like you’re performing below your potential, needing longer breaks or shorter focus sessions than you’d like. That’s ok. Focus on gradually challenging your brain to do more, for longer.
Focus isn’t a sprint. And it’s not a marathon, either. It’s an endless trek that we come back to every single day, year after year. So if you’re going slow, try pushing yourself just a little faster – you’ll get used to it soon enough. If you’re going too fast, try slowing down, and see how much further you can go.
Go with the flow.
~Dan
Dr. Dan Lathen
Founder – Cortex Evolution
Doctorate in Neuroscience
Cognitive Performance Specialist & Brain Coach
Try a free brain coaching session to get expert help adapting this and other techniques to your personal needs
Sources:
Albulescu, P., Macsinga, I., Rusu, A., Sulea, C., Bodnaru, A., & Tulbure, B. T. (2022). “Give me a break!” A systematic review and meta-analysis on the efficacy of micro-breaks for increasing well-being and performance. PLOS ONE, 17(8), e0272460. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272460
Ariga, A., & Lleras, A. (2011). Brief and rare mental “breaks” keep you focused: Deactivation and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements. Cognition, 118(3), 439–443. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2010.12.007
Kühnel, J., Zacher, H., de Bloom, J., & Bledow, R. (2016). Take a break! Benefits of sleep and short breaks for daily work engagement. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 26(4), 481–491. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2016.1269750
Nastasi, J. A., Tassistro, I. B., & Gravina, N. E. (2023). Breaks and productivity: An exploratory analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 56(3), 539–548. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.995
