The 25 minutes were never the problem. The five minutes after them were.
30 September 2026 · 4 min read
The timer rings. "Five-minute break," you tell yourself. You pick up your phone.
Twenty-two minutes later you put it down, a little dazed, and the next Pomodoro never starts. If that sounds familiar, the technique isn’t broken. The break is. Here’s how to fix it.
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A better five-minute break
Francesco Cirillo created the technique and named it after his tomato-shaped kitchen timer ("pomodoro" is Italian for tomato). It has four moves:
Pick one task. Set a timer for 25 minutes and work only on that task until it rings. Take a short break of a few minutes. After four rounds, take a longer break.
That's it. The magic is in the limit. "Study for 25 minutes" is easy to start. "Study all afternoon" is not.
There's good evidence that it helps. In a 2023 study at Maastricht University, 87 students studied with one of three break styles: Pomodoro-style breaks (24 minutes on, 6 off), shorter fixed breaks, or breaks whenever they felt like it.
The students who chose their own breaks studied and rested in longer stretches. They also felt more tired and distracted, and less focused and motivated. All three groups finished the same amount of work, which means the fixed-break groups did it in less time.
It was a one-day study of students, so it isn't the final word. But it matches what many students find: deciding when to stop is tiring in itself. Let the timer decide.
Match the block to the task.
25 minutes works well for reading, flashcards, revision and anything you've been avoiding. It's short enough that starting feels easy.
45 to 50 minutes suits deep work like problem sets or essay writing, where it takes a while to get going.
Longer blocks need longer breaks. A 2022 review of 22 studies found that short breaks raised energy and reduced tiredness, and that the longer the break, the bigger the boost to performance. After a tough 50-minute block, give yourself ten minutes or more.
A break on your phone feels like rest. It usually isn't.
In a Rutgers experiment with 414 people, participants solved puzzles, took a break, then solved more. Those who spent the break on their phone did worse afterwards than those who took the same break on paper or on a computer.
There's a second trap. Nir Eyal, author of Indistractable, warns about the in-between moments, when you move from one activity to the next. That's when distraction is most likely to win. A Pomodoro break is exactly that kind of moment, and you get one every half hour.
Pick something that takes you away from screens and back into your body:
Stand up and stretch your back and shoulders.
Get water. It's a reason to walk, and you probably need it anyway.
Look far away. Out of a window, down a corridor. Your eyes have been fixed on a screen at arm's length.
Walk to another room and back.
Breathe slowly, with a long breath out.
Write your next step. One line: what's the first thing you'll do when the timer starts? It makes starting again much easier.
A vague task. "Study biology" gives your brain nothing to start with. "Make flashcards for chapter 3" does.
"Just checking one thing." The phone break that was meant to take thirty seconds. See above.
Skipping the long break. After four rounds, you need a real rest. Skip it and your fifth and sixth blocks will be half-blocks.
Forcing 25 minutes on deep work. If you're finally in the flow of an essay when the timer rings, that's a sign you need longer blocks for that kind of task. Try 45.
Sometimes the break ends and everything in you wants to do anything else. That reluctance isn't laziness. It's a feeling, and it's usually a specific one: bored, stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure you can do it.
Name it in one word. Then deal with that feeling for two minutes, not the whole task. Bored? Set yourself a ten-minute challenge. Overwhelmed? Write down the one next step. Doubting yourself? Remember the last time you got through something like this.
That's exactly the moment CatchScroll was built for. When the urge to skip hits, you tap the feeling, and it talks you through a two-minute reset made for it. Then you're back in your next block. We explain the six common feelings in why we doomscroll.
Our free focus timer runs 15, 25, 35 or 45-minute blocks with a break timer, and plays brown noise, rain or café sounds if you want them. It works in your browser, with no sign-up.
For the rest of a good study routine, see how to focus while studying on a laptop.
Try it
Start your first block on the free CatchScroll focus timer. And when a break turns into a reach for your phone, CatchScroll’s two-minute resets are built for exactly that moment.
Start a free Pomodoro →Sources