Remote work can feel like the eighth wonder, offering comfort, flexibility, and cost savings while empowering workers to manage themselves and their time. However, with great power comes great responsibility, and staying focused when working from home poses a challenge for many. Some have kids, some have dogs, some have both; and then there are the delivery people needing your signature, and personal calls that demand attention... Or maybe you simply can’t fight the temptation to browse random stuff or check your social media, knowing no co-worker can look over your shoulder and see your computer screen. As a manager, you may notice your team or yourself struggling to concentrate.
While the office environment surely offered its share of distractions (like some talkative colleague, ambient noise, and so on), those times are long gone for many of us. The question now is how to manage distractions at home and whether there’s any tried-and-true formula to overcome them.
The answer is yes, there are some, and in this article, we will scrutinize one of them: the Pomodoro Technique, created by Italian entrepreneur Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s. Then a young undergraduate struggling to concentrate on his studies, Cirillo had his eureka moment when he started to adopt 25-minute bursts of focused study, separated by 5-minute breaks. Legend has it that he used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer to track those sessions, then named his technique after it — “pomodoro” means tomato in Italian.
Fundamentals of the Pomodoro Technique
A full pomodoro cycle consists of four pomodoros, which are those 25-minute long sprints, alternated with the 5-minute breaks. After completing the four pomodoros, you get the right to take a refreshing, well-deserved 20-minute break. A workday should be comprised of around 16 pomodoros.
Even though the Pomodoro Technique was developed in a rather intuitive, iterative way, science backs the concept behind it. Research shows that the brain functions at its optimum level when alternating between periods of intense focus and short breaks.
So, let’s review the fundamentals of the Pomodoro Technique step by step:
- Set a 25-minute timer
- Work on your task for 25 minutes — no distractions allowed!
- When the alarm goes off, take a 5-minute break and celebrate the completion of your first pomodoro
- After the 5-minute break, resume work for another 25 minutes, then take another 5-minute break.
- Keep doing it until you complete four pomodoros
- After four pomodoros, take a 20-minute break — or a longer one if it’s lunchtime
Cirillo gradually optimized his method throughout the years, later creating the concept of “social pomodoro,” which is great for remote teams. Collaborating in synchronized work intervals (using synchronized timers) can provide mutual encouragement and accountability, and create a sense of camaraderie. This article includes a helpful website for organizing social pomodoros later on, so stay tuned.
Being more productive, one pomodoro at a time
The beauty of the Pomodoro Technique is that it is as simple as it is effective. The trick is that each completed pomodoro brings you a sense of achievement, alleviating anxiety and motivating you to keep going. So, you might have lots of work to do, but by focusing on one task at a time, you don’t get to panic.
Moreover, a 25-minute session is long enough to get some work done while not so long to feel discouraging. In reality, the mere thought of an endless work session may cause procrastination. So, it becomes much easier to resist the temptation to check your social media or Google random trivia when you know that all you have to do is endure 25 minutes of focus until you get your reward.
A pomodoro is indivisible
You should protect the integrity of your pomodoro at all costs. Keeping pomodoros intact helps ensure the focus session is effective; otherwise, you lose momentum.
However, there will be days when unexpected, urgent matters interrupt your pomodoros. Or simply days when you’re feeling Oscar Wilde-esque and conclude, just like the Irish playwright, that the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. In these scenarios, what to do?
Well, according to Cirillo, if you have to interrupt a pomodoro, “either because you give in to temptation or something really urgent comes up,” you must cancel the current pomodoro, “even if it’s about to ring.” That’s because a pomodoro cannot be divided. Yes, even an atom can be divided, but a pomodoro cannot. A pomodoro is indivisible.
Once you’re ready to resume work, start a new pomodoro.
Preparing your day
You should always start with a to-do list, estimating the number of pomodoros each task will need. Here are two tips to guide you:
- Large or complex work need several pomodoros, and you should break it down into smaller chunks, determining which chunk corresponds to each pomodoro. According to Cirillo, if a task takes more than 5-7 pomodoros, you should break it down.
- Small tasks like replying to emails or messages can be scheduled together in a single pomodoro instead of being scattered throughout the day. Protect your focus!
Breaks should be screenless... if you can
Now, talking about breaks: their purpose is to refresh your mind and allow it to assimilate what was learned in the previous 25 minutes. Ideally, breaks should be spent off-screen. You can have a cup of coffee, have a snack, hydrate yourself, use the restroom, do some skincare, stretch, do a quick yoga sequence, look through the window to contemplate the landscape, observe the passersby, stare at anything that is not a screen, or just daydream. You may soon find that the Pomodoro Technique is great for doing the laundry, as the short breaks match the different steps of the process: first dropping a load, then hanging it (or folding it, depending on your laundry machine).
If you have dogs, the 20-minute breaks are ideal for walking them. Dogless? Then use these longer breaks to do the dishes, organize your workspace, meditate, take a power nap, or take a walk yourself.
Of course, sometimes you might need to use your break to text a friend or open your bank app and pay a bill, but try not to overdo it. Using your breaks wisely will help increase your motivation for the next pomodoro.
Benefits for all
So, as we’ve just seen, the Pomodoro Technique greatly benefits people with a short attention span and who get easily distracted. Of course, it’s particularly beneficial for individuals with ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). But there’s more to it, as it also helps workers with the opposite problem — those who tend to neglect breaks and end up exhausted and depleted.
We know that trying to work nonstop is counterproductive: as fatigue sets in, the quality of one’s output declines. In real life, though, when faced with huge workloads, we may try it anyway. The Pomodoro Technique prevents burnout and promotes work quality by striking a balance in the brain between focus and freshness, enabling creativity and allowing for better decisions.
So, stick to your pomodoros, and by the end of your workday, you can grin at the realization of how productive, focused, and disciplined you’ve been.
Pomodoro for software development
The Pomodoro Technique can be helpful for many types of work, including software development. Cirillo himself is the CEO of a software development business. His technique has been applied by agile/extreme programming teams and has become especially handy in pair programming contexts.
Pair programming is a software development technique in which two developers work together at a single workstation or on a remote pair programming tool. One developer, the driver, writes code while the other, the observer, reviews each line of code as it is typed in. The two developers should switch roles, taking turns as driver and observer. The pair programming technique has proven to be an effective way to improve code quality, even more so when matched with the Pomodoro Technique.
By breaking the pair programming sessions into pomodoros, programmers can take turns working on the code for 25 minutes and then switch roles for the next pomodoro. This structured approach ensures both programmers have dedicated coding and reviewing time while ensuring discipline to avoid fatigue and burnout.
Remember, as a manager looking to implement the Pomodoro Technique to boost your teams’ productivity, you don’t necessarily need to synchronize timers or implement pair programming. Instead, you can simply introduce the Pomodoro Technique to your team and foster a culture of respecting each other’s pomodoros. Consider creating mechanisms so team members can defend their sessions — for example, a Slack automation that displays a “do not disturb” message whenever someone starts a pomodoro.
Customizing the Pomodoro Technique
Everyone is different, and some workers may find it distracting and counterproductive to interrupt work every 25 minutes to take 5-minute breaks. Because not everybody will benefit from working in the 5:1 work-to-break ratio, there are alternatives to the Pomodoro Technique, such as the 52:17 model (work for 52 minutes, take a 17-minute break). Similarly, you can customize the technique for your own needs.
Pomodoro apps and websites
The original Pomodoro Technique required only a pen, some paper, and a kitchen timer. But that was back in the 80s. In 2024, there’s a myriad of websites and mobile apps to help you with the Pomodoro Technique. Let’s go through some options:
- Marinara: A handy option for team members working on the same task is the Marinara website. It offers a unique viewer link you can send to your team members anywhere in the world, so you can all work off the same pomodoro while keeping the administrator link with full control over the timer. It also offers the possibility of customizing the durations.
- Pomodor: Team members working on different tasks don’t need to share their pomodoros, and the Pomodor website is a good option in this case. Moreover, it allows you to customize the length of both the work sessions and the breaks.
- Session: Mac users who want to try something high-end can use Session. It offers advanced features like syncing with other Apple devices, including Apple Watch. It also integrates with Slack, automatically updating your Slack with a “do not disturb” status whenever a pomodoro starts, and restoring it once the countdown is over. Of course, such a comprehensive app has its price: €5.99/month, or €44.99/year.
- FocusPomo: As long as you are strong enough not to be dragged by social media distractions whenever your phone flashes, you can use a mobile app, too. FocusPomo, for example, features cute animations. As a matter of fact, the illustrations resemble oranges and lemons rather than tomatoes, but, well, oranges and lemons are still very Mediterranean!
Pomodoro for life?
In one of the early versions of his book, Cirilo stated, “The Pomodoro Technique shouldn’t be used for activities you do in your free time.” That’s because applying the Pomodoro Technique, in this case, “would make these activities scheduled and goal-oriented. That’s no longer free time. If you decide to read a book simply for leisure, you shouldn’t use the Pomodoro Technique.”
However, in recent years, social media and the internet have drastically reduced our attention span. Think of all the times you’ve meant to read a few pages of a book only to get sidetracked by notifications on your phone or the urge to google random stuff... and end up in a wormhole of scrolling through social media, wasting precious free time and ultimately feeling bad about yourself. We’ve all been there. So, maybe it’s worth trying the Pomodoro Technique to make better use of our free time. This approach can help us engage in activities like reading our favorite novels, working out, or cleaning. The logic behind it is that by using our free time more mindfully, we can enhance our overall satisfaction with our personal lives.
So, whether you’re managing a remote tech team, focusing on personal tasks, or simply looking to regain your time and get rid of anxiety, the Pomodoro Technique offers a flexible and often effective approach that has stood the test of time.
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