What the Pomodoro technique is
The technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s and named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer he used as a student. The method is deliberately simple: choose one task, work on it with no interruptions for twenty-five minutes, then take a five minute break. That block of focused work is one pomodoro. After four of them, take a longer break of fifteen to thirty minutes. The cycle repeats for as long as you are working.
The value comes from the structure rather than the exact numbers. A short, fixed commitment makes it much easier to start on something you have been avoiding, and the timer gives you a legitimate reason to defer interruptions until the block ends. Because you can count completed blocks, you also get an honest measure of how much focused time a task really took, which is far more useful for planning than a rough guess at hours spent.
Using this timer
The four boxes set the focus length, the short break, the long break and how many focus blocks come before the long one. The defaults are the standard 25, 5, 15 and 4, which is a two hour cycle: four focus blocks of 25 minutes plus three short breaks of 5 minutes plus a 15 minute long break adds up to 130 minutes. Change the numbers and press Apply settings to load them, then press Start.
When a phase reaches zero the timer moves to the next phase automatically and the completed count goes up after each focus block. Skip jumps to the next phase without waiting, which is useful when a meeting cuts a block short. Pause holds the remaining time, and Reset clears the session count and returns to a fresh focus block. The tab title mirrors the phase and the time left, so you can work in another window. Everything runs in the browser and nothing is saved when you close the page.
Getting more out of it
Write down the task before starting the block and keep a scratch list for anything that pops into your head, so you can capture the thought without breaking focus. If you are interrupted for more than a moment, the original method says to abandon the pomodoro and start a fresh one rather than resuming a broken block. Actually leave your desk during breaks; staring at the same screen does not restore attention. Longer blocks of fifty minutes with ten minute breaks suit deep work such as writing or debugging, while shorter fifteen minute blocks can help when starting is the hard part. Aim for a realistic number of blocks a day, often eight to twelve of genuine focused work, rather than trying to fill every hour.