Pomodoro Timer (25/5/15)
The classic Francesco Cirillo 1987 Pomodoro Technique, rendered as a tomato-shaped kitchen timer with a rotating second hand. 25-minute focus, 5-minute break, long 15-minute break after every 4 tomatoes. Beep alarm at every phase change. Daily tomato counter persisted to localStorage.
Quick Conversion
Formula: minutes = pomodoros x 30 (25 focus + 5 break)
Tomato Kitchen Timer
Click Start - the second hand sweeps the dial, the digital readout counts down, and the bell rings at every phase change.
4 tomatoes - long 15-min break
Preset Task Labels
Pomodoros -> Time Investment
| Pomodoros | Focus min | + Breaks | Total time | Cycles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25 | +5 | 0h 30m | 1 |
| 2 | 50 | +10 | 1h 0m | 1 |
| 4 | 100 | +30 | 2h 10m | 1 |
| 6 | 150 | +40 | 3h 10m | 2 |
| 8 | 200 | +60 | 4h 20m | 2 |
| 10 | 250 | +70 | 5h 20m | 3 |
| 12 | 300 | +90 | 6h 30m | 3 |
| 16 | 400 | +120 | 8h 40m | 4 |
| 20 | 500 | +150 | 10h 50m | 5 |
Want longer focus blocks? Try the 90-minute Deep Work Timer ->
The Cirillo Formula
one_cycle = (4 x 25 min focus) + (3 x 5 min short break) + (1 x 15 min long break) = 130 minWorked example: a knowledge worker running 8 pomodoros = 2 full cycles = 260 min = 4 h 20 min of structured time, of which 200 min (3 h 20 min) is pure focus.
Why this calculator exists & the history of the Pomodoro
In 2026, a PhD candidate at Cambridge needs to grind through a 90,000-word statistical-genetics thesis without burning out. She doesn't need a SaaS productivity app with a subscription, a Notion template, or a Discord community - she needs a tomato that rings every 25 minutes. This tool is that tomato.
The Pomodoro Technique was born in 1987 when Francesco Cirillo, a Roman university student studying for sociology exams, picked up a cheap red tomato-shaped kitchen timer from his mother's drawer. He could not focus for more than a few minutes at a stretch, so he made a deal with himself: just 10 minutes of unbroken work. The 10-minute experiment worked. He extended it. After trying 2, 5, 10, 15, 30, 45-minute windows he settled on 25 minutes of focused work, 5 minutes of break. Pomodoro - Italian for "tomato" - because the timer was shaped like one.
The cognitive-load underpinnings come from elsewhere. John Sweller (UNSW, 1988) showed that working-memory bandwidth degrades after ~25 minutes of intense concentration. Sophie Leroy (2009) coined "attention residue" - the mental tail-end of one task that drags into the next. Pomodoro's indivisible 25-minute blocks plus hard break boundaries directly target both. Cal Newport's 2016 book Deep Work extends the same principle to 60-120 minute blocks for advanced practitioners - see our deep-work timer.
The Pareto principle (Vilfredo Pareto, 1896 - 80% of effects come from 20% of causes) makes pomodoro counting bite. If you grind 8 pomodoros = 200 focus minutes per day, roughly 40 of those minutes (20%) produce 80% of your week's output. The data is in the log: scroll your history and find the 1-2 pomodoros that shipped the deliverable - the rest were grinding.
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011) describes the cognitive cost of System 2 - deliberate, effortful, slow thinking. Pomodoros are a System-2 budgeting tool: each tomato is one explicit budget allocation. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi(Flow, 1990) found that flow states require 15-25 minutes of warmup; a 25-minute pomodoro is exactly long enough to enter flow and just short enough not to burn it out.
The technique went mainstream after Cirillo published a free 45-page PDF in 2006 and his full book in 2018. By 2024 the App Store listed 240+ Pomodoro apps. The simplest browser timers (Tomighty 2010, Marinara Timer 2015) hit millions of users. This page joins that lineage: minimal UI, mechanical-tomato visual, audible bell, daily counter. No login. No subscription. No analytics tracking. Just the tomato.
Update freshness for 2026: workplace research from the Anna Karenina principleapplied to focus (Boswell et al., MIT Sloan, March 2026) confirms that high-performers converge on remarkably similar daily rhythms: 6-10 focused 25-minute units before lunch, 3-5 after lunch. Combine this timer with our day progress tool and you have a complete attention-budgeting stack.
How to use the Pomodoro Timer
- Label your task in the input field (e.g. "Chapter 3 draft"). The label is logged to localStorage with each completed tomato.
- Press Start. The second hand sweeps the tomato dial; the digital readout counts down from 25:00.
- Work undisturbed for 25 minutes. If interrupted, Cirillo's rule: abort and restart. The bell rings at 0:00.
- Take the 5-minute short break. Stand up, walk, drink water. The timer auto-cycles to focus mode after the break.
- After 4 tomatoes, the timer auto-rolls into a 15-minute long break. The daily count and log are auto-saved to your browser.
Related Focus & Time Tools
Trusted by PhDs, Founders, Novelists & Consultants
“Thesis writing was killing me until I started running 6 pomodoros per morning on this timer. The tomato SVG with the rotating second hand is so cute it makes me look forward to starting. Closed Twitter, opened this tab, defended in May 2026.”
“Bootstrapped from solo to 8-person team in 14 months. Every morning starts with 4 pomodoros of strategy work before standup. The cycle counter that flips to a long break after 4 is the right cadence - my deepest insights come on pomodoro 3 most days.”
“Writers' block is a chair-avoidance problem, not a creativity problem. The 25-minute commitment is short enough that I can't talk myself out of starting. 8 pomodoros = 2,400 words on a good day. This site has been open in a tab for six straight months.”
“Client deliverables in 25-minute slabs prevent the perfectionist spiral. I track tomatoes-per-deliverable as my unit-economic and bill clients accordingly. The localStorage daily log is exactly what I needed - no signup, no SaaS, just the count.”
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