How the Pomodoro Technique Shrinks Interruptions

Francesco Cirillo set a kitchen timer for 25 minutes in Rome in 1987, but during that short interval he was interrupted four times. The Pomodoro Technique starts with that timer-pick a single task, work on it for exactly 25 minutes, pause for five, and repeat. No multitasking, no checking your phone or email until the timer rings. According to research from the University of Illinois, focus like this raises sustained attention by up to 16%. That recovers the scattered 40 minutes a day that Cirillo lost to interruptions, just by dividing your work into 25-minute sprints.