Pomodoro technique
The Pomodoro technique, created by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, splits work into short focus blocks interleaved with breaks, using a tomato-shaped kitchen timer as the original reference that gave the method its name.
None of these three values is a multiple of 4, so the next phase is always the classic cycle short break.
4 is a multiple of the classic cycle interval, so this is the one repetition out of four that unlocks the long break.
The long preset unlocks the long break every 3 blocks instead of 4, so the same block count wraps the cycle sooner.
It's a time-management method that alternates periods of intense focus (usually 25 minutes) with short breaks. Every four focus blocks, you take a longer break. Each block is a “pomodoro”, named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer used by Francesco Cirillo, who created the technique in the late 1980s.
The classic focus block lasts 25 minutes, followed by a 5-minute break; every 4 finished focus blocks, the break that follows is extended to 15 minutes instead of 5.
Browsers throttle setInterval frequency in inactive tabs to save battery, which would delay a naive counter that decrements "one second per tick". A deadline-based timer avoids this: it recalculates the remaining time by comparing the current clock against the already-set end time, so it does not accumulate drift even with missed ticks.
It depends on the preset: every 4 focus blocks in the classic (25 min) and short (15 min) cycles, and every 3 blocks in the long cycle (50 min). This count is configurable within each of the three presets.
No. Only a focus block that reaches zero adds to the counter that decides whether the next break is short or long; manually stopping before the end does not advance that count.
The timer runs entirely in your browser, with no login and no data sent to any server.